


Thanks for not burning up the whole ship.

by Valeris



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy - All Media Types, Hawkeye (Comics), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Losers - All Media Types, Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Stripper/Exotic Dancer, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Bodyswap, Darcy Lewis is Tony Stark's Daughter, Darcy is the fandom bicycle and I love it, Darcyland, Dog Cops, F/F, F/M, Female Steve Rogers, Female Tony Stark, Kid Fic, M/M, Magic, Multi, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Online Relationship, Platonic Soulmates, Rare Pairings, SHIELD Agent Darcy Lewis, SHIP DARCY WITH ALL THE THINGS, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Terrorism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 11:24:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 29
Words: 44,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3247865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valeris/pseuds/Valeris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of one-shots completed for the Darcy Lewis Rare Pair Challenge.  Tags are up to date.  Some of these will be continued as independent fics, depending on the interest of the readers and the writer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Coffee Shop AU

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing/posting fanfiction, so please be kind, rewind, etc. I do welcome constructive criticism :).

When Natasha started coming into the cafe, it must have been on someone else's shifts.  The first time I saw her, Clint was already treating her like a regular.  He put her coffee down in a saucer near her right hand before she even ordered.  She was looking at her phone, drawing one finger down it in smooth lines. There was something about her mouth while she looked at her phone, a tick on the right side.  Maybe something was frustrating her.

She reached for her coffee and took a drink without even looking at it.

I watched her for a week before I talked to her for the first time. It sounds completely ridiculous to say that the first thing I noticed about her were her hands.  I know that she's gorgeous,and that should have been the first thing I saw.  But there was such a smoothness to the way she used her hands.  I could imagine them being gentle.

 There was a fluidity to her movements that was hard to describe. It was like she was always completely aware of her body.

When she got up to add some cream to her coffee, I don't know what made me say it.  Maybe it was a stupid thing to say, but most of the things I say are stupid. I just usually keep talking until I work my way around to something funny.

“Are you a dancer?” It was a stupid thing to say. My voice was too loud. But the coffee shop was loud, this time of day, and our regulars are used to my loudness. It was like Clint’s visual loudness-- part of the ambiance. They liked to be able to wave to Jane on the street, and impress their friends. Yes, I know the girl with the Dahlia piercings and the half shaved head, we’re friends. I’m artistic and open minded, haven’t you noticed that about me?

I thought maybe I'd surprised her. It was hard to tell.  Her face had a stillness to it, like the surface of a pond. It was sort of restful. I wondered what I looked like to her. Big boobs, big hair-- but maybe she noticed the other things.  I mean, I have hidden depths.

“What makes you ask me that?” She said it softly, her eyebrows raising up a little. They were a little lighter than the rest of her hair, which was perfect. The most perfect curls, the most perfect skin, like a photograph of a person. I wanted to touch it to confirm her reality, which was  inappropriate, and was not something I was going to do. Obviously. I always want to touch people's hair when it's a fun color. It’s part of why I like Jane, because she lets me. I can be too tactile for a lot of people.  I think Jane misses touch, since Thor went on his little ‘spiritual enlightenment’ journey. Or whatever he's been doing for the last two years.  I missed touch, and I didn't even have a Thor to miss.  Maybe that's why I liked Natasha's hands so much, because I wanted them to touch me.

Okay, so I was a little infatuated, already. I shrugged, “I don’t know, just a vibe I get from you. You’re like, dark chocolate smooth, the way you move.” _Jesus Christ, I’m rhyming now._

Clint draped himself on the counter next to me, the long V of his shirt showing way too much man cleavage. Okay, I looked, I’m human.

“I think she may already be composing odes to your beauty Nat.” Clint said, a little mocking and a little jealous. I remember the first time I let him read my poetry. It was a month after he started working at the cafe, just the three of us getting drunk after one of Thor’s letters.  He talked endlessly about how much he loved her but didn’t give the kind of details that Jane was thirsty for. Sometimes I could see her drying up like a houseplant.  I’d water her with glasses of absinthe and girls’ nights where we'd paint our nails and cut up magazines for collages.

Jane is an artist, an amazing one. The things her brain comes up with are beyond my understanding most of the time. All sacred geometry and endless details. I know what she makes is beautiful, and that sometimes I can help by handing her things. Or making her sleep.  Or putting a cup of something hot next to her desk before I go to bed. Clint had stared at the one in the living room for almost half an hour, just taking it in.  I was afraid for a moment that he’d fallen in love with her, the way Thor had at one of her art openings. He hadn’t looked like the type to fall in love with Jane, some tall blond a suit, but he’d stared and stared at her work.  And then at her, with the same astonishment. Like he couldn’t believe that something like her actually existed.

I think in a way, she broke him.

I could tell though, that Clint didn’t love Jane that way. He struck me as someone who played for the other team. But he looked at her  differently after that, like he finally got her. When he asked if I was an artist, and I’d told him no, he smiled at me, and there was a little edge to it.

“Really?” He’d said, with his eyebrows up, all wide eyed innocence. Now, I would recognize him goading me, but I was young and naive back then. (Yes, I know it was only like a year and a half ago, but I’ve experienced a lot of personal growth since then, okay?)

I’d shrugged and admitted that, okay, sometimes I liked to write. But I was nothing like Jane, I helped her sometimes but I could never really do what she did. After that he wouldn’t let it go, and even though I never, never showed anyone my poems, somehow I ended up showing him.

At first he’d had this little smile on his face, not exactly mocking, maybe… indulgent. Like when your kid draws you a picture, and you know it’s not any good, but you don’t want to say that. And then, it had changed.

He’d sat down on the floor, his shoulders pulled forward, and read everything. All my old notebooks, the files on my computer. Everything. I had almost passed out by the time he'd finished, lying on my back in the window seat with my hair dragging on the floor. Playing cat's cradle with one of my shoelaces.

He'd stared at me afterwards.  Like I was one of Jane’s paintings he was trying to figure out.  I’d made a disgusting face at him, the one I use on my little brother to make him laugh even when he's crying. Clint snorted, then shook his head at me, smiling just on one side of his mouth.

“You’re unbelievable, Darce.”

We hadn’t talked about it since then-- I hadn’t asked, and he hadn’t offered. It felt a little like a one night stand. It had happened, and talking about it would only make things awkward for both of us. I’d thought we were in agreement about that. Apparently, Clint had been saving up what he thought of my poetry for the perfect opportunity to embarrass me.

He shoved me with his shoulder, encouraging. Maybe he wasn’t trying to embarrass me, maybe he was trying to be my wingman.

That was almost worse. I’d seen the way Clint flirted with Phil when he came in, and it was about as subtle as a hammer. He just slammed the poor man with innuendo after innuendo until he cracked.

Well, it did seem to work, so maybe he was onto something.

“You should show her some of your poetry, Darce. Nat’s a cultured lady, she’d appreciate it.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Clint, because you appreciated it so much.”

His smirk dropped off his face like a mask. The face behind it was intense. It was hard to look at.

It seemed like it would be lonely, to always show the world some other face.

“ ‘His rain was a wonder, a body like the summer, who brought the winter down on us.’ “ He quoted, closing his eyes. When he opened them they burned into me, so blue. “I remember everything I read, Darce. It was a spiritual experience. I’m not a spiritual kind of guy.” He grinned, and it was back, the silly mask. The fake Clint that I’d gotten to know the last few months.

I felt almost nauseatingly guilty, for not seeing him. He hadn’t wanted me to, but that didn’t feel like enough of a reason to have missed it.

When I reached out and put my hand against his cheek, I'd forgotten Natasha was even there. “That is massively untrue, dude, and you know I hate it when my friends badmouth themselves. Besides, how spiritual can I be? You remember that eclipse.”

Clint smiled, this time a real one. “Once upon a time I was falling in love--” He started, and we finished together, “Now I’m only falling apart, nothing I can do, a total eclipse of the heeeeart.”

It had been one of those nights where Jane had to go to the woods. One of her charts or something had said she had to be there at 3 am. If I’d asked why she’d have explained and I’d have understood maybe half of it, so I just drove her.  We lay on the roof of the car while Jane sketched and the shadow of the Earth started to cover the moon. It was a total lunar eclipse, and it was beautiful and maybe spiritual, but my mind seemed to think that this was a perfect opportunity for some Bonnie Tyler.

I’d started snickering, and Clint had looked over at me, eyebrows raised. His face had been peaceful experiencing the spiritual moment that I was clearly incapable of having.

So I’d ruined it for both of us, and he’d laughed himself almost sick. Jane hadn’t noticed a thing, because she was making Art, and couldn’t have been disturbed by a car accident happening three feet in front of her.

Natasha was watching the whole thing, looking a little amused. So beautiful, and untouchable, and totally beyond me. I felt even more in sympathy with Jane. How impossibly far away Thor must have felt, even when he was right there in front of her. Still, I opened my mouth to say something else stupid. To talk until she laughed at something. Even if she was just laughing at me.

Then her face went sharp, aware, and Clint, with his arm draped loosely around my shoulder, went tense. It happened all at once, hard to sort out in my mind, the loud crack of a gunshot, one of the carafes of hot coffee tipping onto the floor and spilling scalding liquid across the counter, Clint shoving me down with a strength I didn’t know he had. Then my face was on the dirty tile behind the counter, my nose hurt, and something heavy was pressing down on me.

Clint’s body, covering mine, while he spoke to Natasha rapidly in some other language. Maybe it was Russian, or the weird round syllables of Thor’s native language. Jane had learned some of it, would practice by herself in her room late at night. Maybe this is what it sounded like fast.

Natasha had someone pressed against the counter, his arm at an angle that was… yep, definitely broken, a gun still loosely clutched in his fingers. She slammed his hand against the counter brutally, and then again, and it fell to the floor with a loud clatter.

 _It seems so loud because everyone’s quiet._ I realized. Natasha and Clint were still talking at each other, both angry and gesturing with their faces because their hands were busy. Clint had snatched up the gun and had it trained on the guy, holding it with both hands in a strangely professional grip.

But everyone else in the cafe remained frozen, not sure what to do, who was the threat. Like deer in the road, trying to make themselves invisible with their stillness.

“What the fuck.” I said, my voice coming out kind of croaky and strange. I swallowed to wet my throat, and tried to push up to my feet, only to have Clint tense and push me down a little harder.

“What the fucking--FUCK. Clint, get your heavy ass off of me.” I said, shoving at him. He gave me a long stare, then reluctantly got off of me, his eyes darting between me and the guy on the counter.

“He might not be the only one in here, keep down.” He said, authoritative, like he was in charge and I should know it. His whole body language was different, so controlled like Natasha's. She was holding the man on the counter, still yelling at him in that other language and periodically slamming his broken arm down for emphasis. He let out a sharp little sound, that was somehow familiar.

“...Ian?” I said, incredulous. Ian was the guy who hauled in our packages for us sometimes. The nice guy who lived downstairs, who I’d kissed once and then enjoyed a pleasant little flirtation with. Ian did not seem like a guy who would know how to even fire a gun, let alone pull one out and try to shoot me in the head. Because that was what had happened. He had been trying to kill me.

Ian seemed to become aware of my presence, and looked a little… guilty. “Hey, Darcy.” He sounded abashed, as if I’d caught him trying to not hold the elevator for me.

I found that I was really, really pissed off.

“What the fuck, Ian.” I said, standing up over Clint’s protests. Even though Natasha was holding onto him, I still felt like I had to shove him.

He winced, probably because I’d jarred his broken arm, and said something in that burbling language that had Natasha yelling at him and slamming him down on the counter some more.

Clint rolled his eyes. “I’m not sure if it’ll translate well, sort of a proverb, but Ian would like you to know that this was nothing personal, and that in fact he finds you to be a very lovely girl.”

“Um… Okay, thanks I guess dude, but you know it’s sort of hard for me to believe you when you’re pledging your troth or whatever right after trying to fucking. Shoot. Me.” I found that I was punctuating my statement by smacking him on the shoulder closest to me.

I heard someone in the cafe let out a startled laugh and then choke it back. I couldn’t really blame them, I was one more ridiculous statement away from hysterical laughter myself.  The front of my jeans and sweater were dark with spilled coffee, which was spreading into a huge mess all over the floor . I felt that if I could just clean up, then everything would go back to normal, but it seemed impossible that Clint would let me out of his sight to get a mop.

When I thought about it, it did seem like Clint was always around. He had just sort of inserted himself into out lives. Like Ian.

Everyone in the cafe had started to come out of their stupors and were either clearing out or watching with avid curiosity,  dying to ask what was going on but put off by Nat’s harsh face and the strange seriousness of Clint’s. Even with his silver painted eyelids and that ridiculous purple V neck, he was intimidating right now.

“So.” I had my hands planted on my hips, like Wonder Woman, because I’d read an article that claimed striking a ‘power pose’ was good for your self confidence, and I needed a little self confidence right now. “Do you want to explain why you’ve suddenly gone all Jason Bourne on me, Clint? Because this is really fucking unsettling, like freaky nightmare levels of weird, and I’d like a little reassurance that I’m not experiencing late onset schizophrenia.”

“You didn’t really expect that the Prince would go on a long diplomatic mission without assigning you and Jane some kind of protection detail.” Natasha said. She was still casually restraining Ian, like this was something she did all the time, her hair falling in front of her face a little.

Probably it was.

She had a little half smile, like she wanted me to play along with some kind of game. Under other circumstances, I would think she was flirting with me, but as it was becoming increasingly obvious to me that I was horrible at reading people, I decided that I was definitely wrong.

“...’The Prince’.” I repeated, and then it all clicked together in my head. Thor’s utter confusion when it came to everyday things like hanging up his coat when he came inside and his weird chivalry.  The way he always pulled Jane’s chair out for her, or kissed her hand when he had to leave.

Jane had said things to me about Thor being her prince, I just didn’t realize that the word was supposed to be capitalized.

“Holy shit. Well, okay, actually this makes a lot of sense, but I am going to give him so much shit for couch surfing at our house.” The last part I muttered under my breath, but Natasha caught it anyway.

“Well, to be fair, he actually didn’t have any money at the time. He and his father had a little falling out over his less than conventional choice of bride, and he seemed to think that disinheriting the Prince would be the most expedient way to get him to change his mind.” Natasha grinned with a few too many teeth. “Those of us who would like to see our country run by someone who is not petty and insane of course saw things differently. Jane is… a little unusual, but her background check came back clean, and she’s quite charming in person.” Natasha shrugged, as if to say ‘There’s no accounting for taste’, but if Thor’s father was an actual King, I could… kind of see his point. Jane is my girl and I’m with her to the end, but envisioning her running an entire country was pretty impossible.

Actually, I was having a hard time envisioning Thor running a country either.

“Apparently the experiment worked a little too well-- by the time the King was ready to welcome the Prince back into the fold, he told him that he had no interest in being a King. That he would rather ‘learn what it meant to be a good man, than a great King’.” Natasha made a sour face. “That leaves us with Prince Loki, who is not popular with most of the kingdom. The Prince has been working with his brother to try to get some popular support for his ascension, but it seems to be backfiring a bit. There are some--” She gave Ian a little slam for emphasis, “Who feel that if only those who have ‘lured’ the Prince away were gotten rid of, that he would return to us.”

I snorted, I couldn’t help it. “Wow. That’s… impressively wrong.” I said to Ian. Ian had this kind of glassy eyed thing going on, like he was starting to mentally check out from the pain, but he grimaced a little at my words.

Natasha smiled at me again, and I felt my heart speed up a little. _She’s just smiling, she’s not smiling at YOU, slow your roll_. I told myself.

Still, I felt a little flutter in my stomach.

“Obviously you and Jane had a protective detail, but there have been some additional threats made ever since the Prince announce his intentions to leave the country, so we felt it was prudent to have some supplemental operatives on the scene. Of course if I’d known all the attempts would be so incompetent, I might have stayed home.”

Her look of contempt could have stripped paint.

“Wait… Thor’s coming back?” I perked up, thinking of the way I caught Jane some nights just staring up the sky with that lost look on her face.  

Ian winced a little at his name, and said something sharp in that other language that made Natasha laugh. When I raised my eyebrows at her, she shrugged. “He feels your use of the Prince’s first name lacks the proper respect.”

She didn’t have to add, _Because he’s an idiot_ , her body language communicated the sentiment.

It seemed like forever until the police showed up, and took Ian off, and let me clean up the coffee. I was leaning on the counter staring kind of blankly, trying to take it all in, wishing I could just go home and eat chocolate in bed. Wondering if Clint still worked here now, or if Jane and I would have to split his shifts until we could hire someone new.

Natasha was in front of me for a few seconds before I registered her, and I twitched before I could stop myself. She smiled. It was a good smile, one that said she thought it was funny but not in a bad way.

“I assume you won’t be able to go home and change for a while, since Clint’s a little preoccupied with the local authorities,” _Local authorities_ was pronounce like an insult, “He'll be back to finish his shift when he can of course but I was sure you'd want to change.  So, I have this for you.”

She was holding out a white shopping bag with hand-stamped fleur de lis on it, which meant she had gone to one of the pricey little boutiques in the area that were impossible for me to shop at. Something about the way she was holding it out, the way she had said “I have this for you” made me think she felt shy. Like she was saying, “Please like this present I got for you, please don’t think I’m weird for giving it to you.”

I knew that face.  It was every time I’d tried to make friends with someone by drawing them a little picture, giving them a piece of candy, telling stupid jokes.

I wanted to kiss her right then.


	2. Idol/Fan prompt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her kid was going to get to meet Captain America. He was going to shake his hand, or sit on his lap like Santa, or whatever it was that superheros did at personal appearances.

Phil was doing the little dance kids do when they’re either really excited, or they have to pee.  Based on the circumstance, Darcy felt inclined to go with excited, but wasn’t entirely ready to rule out ‘has to pee’.  (He'd had a lot of cocoa this morning.)

The cocoa was not helping, that was not her best idea. Getting him jacked up on sugar before the biggest day of his young life seemed designed to cause a meltdown.  It had been more for her than for him.  Anyone who could face a day full of five year olds without something sweet and chocolatey in their system was a better woman than Darcy.

Not that Phil really counted as a five year old, he was way too cool.  That was why they were here-- because Captain America seemed to be the only thing that made Phil act like a five year old.  There was something a little creepy about that level dignity and composure on such a little kid.

Darcy hadn’t been ready to parent a child when Phil had landed on her doorstep.  Maybe he had sensed that, because he was doing his best to not be a child.

It was weird.  Blah blah blah, child psychology, blah blah blah ‘different ways of coping with grief’-- it was weird.

He wasn’t even ticklish.

Darcy had stumbled onto Phil’s love of Captain America when she was cleaning his room.  Not that she needed to, Phil kept his room immaculate. But she still liked to pretend that she was helping him straighten it up so she didn’t feel so extraneous.  

Darcy knew Phil was acting like this because he was afraid Darcy didn't want him.  He was trying to be easy.  But sometimes it felt like he thought she was too irresponsible to look after him.  

Well, he was five, he didn’t think that, but most of the rest of his family had.  The reading of the will had been like one of those dreams where you're naked and everyone is staring at you.  It had made her feel small, and incredibly aware that her clothes were not as nice as theirs.  She’d only been working for the Starks for a few months when Phil’s father had died. She had no idea he’d changed the terms of his will, or when he’d done it, or why.  

For once her utter lack of poker face had been an asset.  It was hard to accuse her of manipulating Howard when she looked as calculating as a dead fish.  All the tabloids seemed to have that picture-- Darcy with her mouth open, gobsmacked.

The only member of the family who wasn't an ass about it was Tony, irony of ironies.  He’d been all quiet and stunned with the rest of them, before  letting out a long breath.   He’d smiled at Darcy, this huge blinding grin.

“That’s great, no, this is fantastic, this is perfect!  Yes, absolutely, Darcy, why didn’t I think of it before, Phil likes you, well of course he likes you, you’re likeable, I like you.  I mean, I think this is a great idea.  I’m not… I love Phil, of course I do, he’s my brother, love him like a brother, but I’m not really responsible, per say, I was going to ask you to stay on, keep looking after him, but this is better really, this is a much better idea, stability, children need stability, and Phil is a child, so he needs that, someone stable, someone--”

At that point, Pepper had put a hand on his shoulder, and Tony had stopped talking all at once.

For all that he’d let out that big breath, no one talked that much if they weren’t trying really hard not to say something else.  Darcy was a talker too, she understood.  She tried to include Tony-- sent him text messages about Phil, kept him in the loop.  When she’d found Phil’s Captain America drawings, it had been impossible not to take a picture and send it to him.  It was too adorable not to share.

After that, things had sort of spun out of control.  Tony did not know the meaning of ‘restraint’.  When he promised Phil could meet Captain America, Darcy had assumed he would be getting them tickets to one of the Captain’s public appearances.

But no. He had tried to pay the Captain to pay a house call through a series of increasingly insulting messages left with his agent.  Followed by a level of throwing money around that was impressive even for Tony.

And now Captain America hated Tony Stark and anything to do with the name Stark. Because he was an Entitled Capitalist Pig.  Or something along those lines.  There had been some angry tweets that she had not read.  (Darcy didn't like to believe that anything that happened on Twitter was socially relevant.)

Still, with all his money throwing Tony had been able to get a ticket to one of the Captain’s more intimate personal appearances.  Just 50 people, a small meet and greet. Sure, the Captain had said that no amount of money would make it worth his time to meet ANY Stark (alright, maybe she had skimmed some of the tweets), but Darcy reasoned that neither of them were actually Starks.  Darcy Lewis was certainly not a Stark.  And while Howard Stark was Phil’s father, he had his mother’s last name.  So he was a Coulson, and no one had to know otherwise.

Her kid was going to get to meet Captain America.  He was going to shake his hand, or sit on his lap like Santa, or whatever it was that superheros did at personal appearances.

The line to get into the building was full of other wiggly kids with their parents.  The adults ran the gambit from bored-out-of-their-minds to oh-my-god-is-that-Justin-Bieber levels of excitement.  Darcy felt relieved to see that most of them had dressed very nicely, because it had taken 45 minutes to talk Phil out of wearing a tuxedo.  He had been horrified that Darcy was planning on wearing jeans and a cardigan. They had eventually compromised on a 50s style black dress with high heels, on the condition that Phil was not allowed to wear any sort of suit.  Darcy was concerned that even a button up shirt and slacks would be too much, but a few of the other kids seemed to be wearing expensive stuff. She didn’t want to walk in essentially waving a sign that said “Yes, my five year old only wears Armani, we’re fabulously wealthy”.  That would just invite trouble.  Still, the tickets had been expensive even without the ‘you’re an asshole’ surcharge that had been tacked on to whatever check Tony had written. None of the other parents seemed to find Phil’s outfit strange.  Darcy was pretty sure they were blending in until they got to the security person.

 _Shit._ Darcy thought, because immediately, she knew they’d been made.  The way the woman glanced over at them in line, and then back again, told Darcy everything she needed to know.

Her backup came in the form of two ridiculously good looking guys, further evidence that Darcy's life was one of the ways that God entertained himself.  Sure, one of them had a prosthetic arm, but Darcy was an equal opportunity employer. The other one had a frowny look on his face, but he looked like the kind of guy who laughed easily. On a good day, Darcy would have had at shot with at least one of them, but today was clearly not a good day.  

Today, these men were not potential dates.  These men were the enemy.

She narrowed her eyes at them, trying for that angry snake face that Jane did.   It was the most intimidating face that she’d ever seen on a small woman.  As Darcy was also small, it seemed like a good move.

The one with the arm raised an eyebrow at her, but the frowny faced guy seemed to think she was funny.  He looked like someone who was happy a lot, who knew how to smile.

Darcy could use a little of that in her life right now.

He smiled at her when they got to the front of the line.  It was a good smile, disarming and friendly.  Darcy narrowed her eyes a little more.

“Excuse me miss, could I speak with you for a moment?”  He said, glancing down at Phil, who was looking extremely five years old. Damn it, even that was a point in this guy’s favor. He got it that Phil was a person who might be hurt by this conversation.  Picking up on the atmosphere, Phil gripped Darcy’s hand with more force than usual.

One-armed guy was totally on it though.  “Hey,” He said, kneeling down so he was at eye level with Phil, “I hear you’re a big fan of Cap.  Do you know who I am?”

Phil looked at him blankly for a moment  before dropping Darcy’s hand to grip the man’s shirt like he expected him to try and escape.  “Oh my god.”  He whispered, eyes comically wide in shock.  “Oh my god!  Darcy, Darcy, it’s BUCKY!”

Watching Phil have his little breakdown was the most adorable thing she had ever seen in her life.  He was so excited he was twisting in half circles like a washing machine, clutching the bottom of Bucky's shirt.  He had forgotten all dignity and was overflowing with details about this guy and his history with Cap. “Darcy, it’s Bucky!” made a few more ecstatic appearances.  He seemed to have no problem following Bucky to the side of the line.

In spite of herself, Darcy felt impressed--that didn’t mean she was pleased.  She and the guy with the happy face stepped behind the barricade.  He was watching his friend and Phil with a small smile.

Darcy could feel herself getting livid, looking at his stupid handsome smug face.

“Well.  That was really smooth, dude.  Way to get my kid even MORE excited before you kick us out.  Thanks for that, really.  I mean, this is basically the only thing he’s looked forward to, at all, since his father died, so I’m glad that you’ve gone out of your way here to be cruel to a five year old.  It mean so much to me, I can’t even tell you.”

Happy Face Guy looked totally dumbstruck.  “Uh… No, I mean, of course that’s not what I was trying to do.”

Aaaand now he looked guilty.  Darcy felt a little stab of hope, because she knew how to work guilt.  She’d had a Jewish mother.

“Look, what’s your name?”

He perked up a little.  “Um, Sam, miss.”

“Well Sam, in the immortal words of Yoda, ‘there is no try’.  So if you’re not getting a recently orphaned kindergartener all pumped up, and then sending him home without getting to meet his hero Captain America, thus emotionally scarring him for life, then what are you doing right now?”

Okay, technically Phil was not a kindergartener, he was way too smart for that, but it was an essentially true statement.  Sam’s face, which had started to look a little more cheerful, plummeted again.  He looked so sad and confused that Darcy almost felt bad for him.  

She pictured Phil’s drawings, the little Captain America on the lawn of their house holding his hand, while a little Darcy waved at them from inside.  (There was also a little Tony building things in the attic of the drawing, but as Tony was the cause of their problems, Darcy wasn’t really ready to include him at the moment.)

With that image to steady her, Darcy went in for the kill.  “I know you’re just doing your job here, but I am not going to make your life easier by walking out of here so that when that little boy’s heart breaks, you don’t have to see it.  Tony was an asshole.  I get that.  He usually is.  But do you, and does _Captain America_ ,” (Darcy put a lot of sarcasm into that name) “want to punish a five year old boy for that?  Because if he does, he’s going to have to come out here and say it to our faces. We paid for our tickets, and we are not leaving.”

Darcy went back to join the line, which still contained eight children and their increasingly mutinous parents.  Phil, on the other hand, looked like he was in Heaven.  Bucky had picked him up, and they seemed to be having an intimate conversation. It involved a lot of whispering and hugging.

He actually seemed reluctant to give Phil back.

“Darcy,” Phil whispered, pressing his face against hers the way he only did when it was a Real secret, “Bucky says he wants to come see me, can he come over and play sometime?”

Darcy put her best angry snake face back on.  “Yes.”  She said, trying to communicate _If you are fucking with my kid right now, I will fuck you up_ only through the weight and intensity of her glare.  “I hope that Bucky isn’t too busy to be held to that promise.”

Darcy may have said the word promise like, 2x louder than any other word.

He looked surprised, and then he grinned.  It felt like a fun smile.

Darcy and Phil could both use a little fun.

Sam was watching the exchange looking shell shocked.  “Um.  Yes.  Okay.  Well, okay.  Miss Lewis, if you want to come this way, I’m sure that the Captain would be happy to meet you and Phil next.”

Darcy smiled at him.  “Yes, I’m sure he will be.  Thank you.”

She set Phil down and held up a pocket mirror so he could check his hair.  He nodded at her seriously, and Darcy took his hand.  She gave the men another wide smile and they walked through the door, her heels clicking smartly down the hallway.

They watched her go.  “Damn, I think I’m in love.”  Sam finally said.  

Bucky smirked.

“Well, you better act fast, because I already have a date.”


	3. Anonymous Love Letters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ll kill him.” Jan said seriously, taking Darcy’s face in her hands and tilting her head so she could get a better look at the damage. “We will make you look so cute, of course, you absolutely have the bone structure for short hair. But once you’re back to adorable, then I’ll kill him.”

First, something had blown up in the lab, which wasn’t unusual.  Jane’s babies were temperamental, and sometimes Tony’s people made them angry. (And you wouldn’t like them when they’re angry.)

Like one of those internet videos where someone puts a cd in the microwave, there had been a bright flash and a smell in the air like lightning.  Then every glass surface in the room had shattered.

It would take almost a week to repair her whatever-the-hell-it-was. Jane looked like her dog had cancer.  Sure, to Darcy it looked like a fancy copier, but in Jane’s eyes who knew what it was.  There was clearly a deep emotional attachment-- she had been stroking it and making little whimpering noises.  

After two hours of coddling, Darcy finally had Jane settled down with some dry erase markers.  There was scientific importance in mapping out the path of the explosion mathematically.  (Or so Jane told her.)  Darcy was happy to take Jane's word for it.

Then she was obligated to meet with Tony about said explosion.  He was right.  Jane’s equipment was counterintuitive to everyone who was not Jane, and her refusal to sync her data with Jarvis compounded the problem.  Jane was a pain in the ass.

But Jane was Darcy’s pain in the ass, so she could never agree with Tony.  The whole S.H.I.E.L.D. thing had made Jane paranoid about electronic copies, and Tony was not a 'hard copy' sort of person.  Paper seemed to actively offend him.  There _were_ electronic copies, because Darcy made them, but it was a very secret backup.  

Possibly even a secret from Jane.

Still, if those were the only disasters of the day, it wouldn’t have been a terrible one.  Not great, but not tipping the scales awful.  

Then Johnny Storm had set her hair on fire.

From Jan’s face when she found Darcy in the bathroom, it was bad.  It had to look way more awful than she’d thought, if the ever-cheerful Janet Van Dyne could look so crestfallen.

“I’ll kill him.”  Jan said seriously, taking Darcy’s face in her hands and tilting her head so she could get a better look at the damage.  “We will make you look so cute, of course, you absolutely have the bone structure for short hair.  But once you’re back to adorable, then I’ll kill him.”

Darcy had surrendered the scissors without a protest.  She’d like what Jane had done with her hair in the morning, after she recovered from the loss.  It was a sort of asymmetrical bob that seemed easy to style, and a much better haircut than she’d any right to expect.

Actually, it kind of looked like the way Jan had her own hair.

Darcy had gone to the kitchen to eat her feelings when she found the first note.  Someone had printed “You are still beautiful” in bold, blocky letters across a piece of cardstock. It was held down on the kitchen counter with four chocolate hearts in pink foil.

She went to bed feeling a little better.

 

In the morning there was another, on a coffee cup that sat (still warm) outside her door.  

“Today will be a good day”, the cup said.

“Okay, cup, I’m gonna take your word for it.”  Darcy told it, and sipped.  Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to accept anonymous food and drink, but this was Avengers tower.  Anyone with enough access to leave her treats was probably good people.  In this case, good people who knew her coffee order.

Jan made her do a slow turn in the hallway when they met, assessing how the hair had survived the night.  She nodded, pursing her lips a little in concentration.  “Yes, I was right, you are just adorable with short hair.  I will still kill him.”

Then she noticed the coffee. “Oooh, you have a present?” Jan made grabby hands so she could examine the handwriting, putting her face close to the paper.

“Ooooooooh, and you’re blushing, is it a romantic present?  Do you like a boy?”  Jan was going a little cross-eyed, trying to read the cup and waggle her eyebrows at the same time.

“Don’t be such a butthead.” Darcy replied, reclaiming her cup and clutching it to her chest.  Jan grinned, a little bouncy in her excitement.  Jan was the most naturally cheerful person Darcy had ever been around.  Being around her was like being exposed to one of those sun lamps they give people with Seasonal Affective Disorder.

“I can’t believe you just called me a butthead.  I don’t think anybody has called me a butthead since the 9th grade.” Jan answered.

“Maybe not to your face.”

 

After that, the notes became a regular thing.  Usually they were short, just something sweet that was often accompanied by chocolate.

Sometimes they were a flower, or a pretty piece of paper folded into something.

Darcy was falling in love with them, whoever they were.  She was trying to not really examine the ‘who’ of it.

She felt pretty comfortable ruling out Clint.  It seemed like he and Natasha might be ‘on’ again-- she’d been wearing that little arrow necklace a lot-- and no one was stupid enough to cheat on the Black Widow.

Steve could have been a contender.  He was sweet enough to do something like this.  Still, it didn’t feel like him-- some of the notes had little pop culture references that she didn’t think Steve would make.  

Most recently there had been a necklace with rose quartz beads and a note that said “On Wednesdays we wear PINK” with rhinestones glued to the last word.  It didn’t exactly scream Captain America.

Jan was no help at all.

“I can picture it, Steve with a list of all your favorite movies, plowing through them with that crease in his forehead.  Not really getting it, but trying so hard.  A labor of love.  It’s so sweet.  Think of all the All-American babies you’ll have together.”  Jan was throwing popcorn into her mouth between sentences.  Or throwing it in the general direction of her mouth.  Most of it was on the floor behind the couch, but Darcy could see at least one kernel working its way under the blanket they were sharing.  On the tv screen Sandra Bullock was pulling a donut out of the front of her evening gown.

Every time Jan arched her neck trying to catch a piece of popcorn in her mouth her toes curled against Darcy’s leg.  It was distracting.

“It can’t be Steve.  Whoever it is though, this is the most successful wooing I have ever experienced.  Like, my body is ready mystery dude.”  Darcy tried to laugh, but it came out a little choked when Jan’s foot stroked really far up her thigh.  She deeply regretted wearing shorts.

Things had gotten a little… weird with Jan.  Darcy was always aware of her now.

“Oh, are we going to start communicating only in internet memes?  Because I can do that, we can ask Jarvis to--”

“Van Dyne, are you abusing my A.I. again?”  Tony’s head popped through the open doorway, taking in the popcorn covered floor.  He raised an eyebrow.  “Pillow fight, girls?”

Jan raised an eyebrow as well.  “Tony, are you jealous, do you want to have a girls’ night too?”

“Only if I can have some of your large, cheesy pizza.”  He deadpanned.  Darcy froze.

Jan looked delighted.  “Oh my god!  Tony. You’ve seen it, _why didn’t you tell me you’ve seen Miss Congeniality_ , you know it’s my favorite.  We could all watch it together.  Here, we can rewind it, Tony, we can watch it again right now-- Oh good, he’s gone.”

Darcy was pretty sure that all the blood had drained from her face, if not from her entire body.

“Hey, Jarvis, could you cue up that Luke Skywalker meme?  It’s very emotionally necessary for me to see that right now.”

“Certainly, Miss Lewis.”  Miss Congeniality was immediately replaced with the face of a young Mark Hamill.  

“No.” He cried in anguish, hair blowing into his bloody face, “No.  That’s not true. That’s impossible!”

The clip ended, leaving Darcy and Jan in a mostly dark room.  Jan had her head tilted to the side, trying to figure out the joke.  Darcy saw the moment the connection was made.

“Oh my god.” Jan looked horrified. “You think it’s _Tony_?  That is just… wrong, no, how could you even think I am acting like Tony--”

Jan slapped both hands over her mouth, her eyes huge.

“Janet. Evangeline. Van Dyne.”

“Okay, I know this looks bad, because I’ve been teasing you about it, but I thought you’d figure it out!  Who else could it be!  Tony, honestly, how could you think it was Tony--”

Then Jan stopped talking, because Darcy was kissing her.


	4. Devil/Angel AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Jane, your devil’s advocating is getting kind of literal here.” Darcy said, her voice muffled by the inside of the refrigerator. It kept the food a few degrees below room temperature. Which was not exactly what they were going for, refrigerator-wise.
> 
> “Damn his insidiousness. I want to call him. I’m not going to call him. What is that look on your face.” Jane demanded, waving her hand at Darcy in a frantic way. “Your face is doubting, stop doubting me, I demand your unconditional agreement and support.”
> 
> “Okay. Jane, I support your decision to sell your soul to Tony Stark. I think it is your best decision ever.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a really hard time with this one! Sorry it's just a lot of dialogue.

 The lock on the front door had been broken since Darcy and Jane moved in, because they lived in the worst apartment in New York.   A partial list of the things wrong with it included:

  * If you pulled on the bathroom faucet too hard, it came off in your hand.  

  * The draft from their unsealed windows  was strong enough to blow out a candle.  

  * The carpet in the bathroom had most definitely had a toilet overflow on it at some point.  

  * Parts of the linoleum in the kitchen was duct taped down.  

  * The previous tenant had gotten carbon monoxide poisoning from the heating unit.

  * They had cockroaches.




There was mold in the apartment, but as long as Darcy didn’t actually see it, she was willing to pretend it was not there.

The living room wouldn’t have been spacious had it not been full of Jane’s equipment.   _With_  it, it was claustrophobic, and Darcy was always getting in trouble with Jane for hanging her clothes out to dry on it.

Darcy was jerking her key out of the lock, groceries on the floor, when Jane hit the blinking light on the answering machine.

“Hello, this is Pepper Potts, calling on behalf of Tony Stark.”  Her voice was smoother and more elegant than anything on their cheap speakers had a right to be.  It was as if through sheer dignity, her voice repelled static.  

She sounded like money.

“I am trying to reach a Dr. Jane Foster.  It has come to our attention that she has need of additional funding to continue her research, and Mr. Stark has an interest in providing said assistance.”

At the name ‘Stark’, Jane’s grocery bag split down the center, and a glass jar of yogurt voided its contents on the floor.

“Please contact us at your earliest convenience, via the provided phone number.”

Jane watched the mess soak into the horrible brown shag carpet, clutching the rest of the ripped bag to her chest.

“Did I hallucinate that, or did we just get a voicemail from the devil?”

 

 

Tony Stark wasn’t ‘the Devil’ in capital letters.  He was a devil, just like Thor was ‘a god’ with a little g.  (The jury was still out on big-g God, at least as far as Darcy was concerned.)  But he was the most famous devil.

Everyone owned StarkTech-- at the least a Starkplayer-- and if they didn’t, they wanted to.  That had been his genius.  Any chump could sell their soul for market share.  

Tony had sold his for desirability.

(Or so they said.)

They said a lot of things about Tony.  He was richer than god.  He had a stripper pole in his jet.  He was sexy.

Darcy didn't know about the first two, but she could agree that he did know how to manscape, and he looked pretty sharp in a suit.

 

 

Jane sat at the kitchen counter and talked to herself, saying things like: 

“Okay, no, I’m not going to call him.”  Firmly.

And then, “I can’t call him.  Thor wouldn’t want me to call Tony for funding.”

And finally, "I'm desperate, yes, but I'm not  _Tony Stark_ desperate." 

By the time Darcy had finished cleaning up the yogurt, Jane was poking a fingernail into a crack in the countertop and twisting it vindictively as a form of negative reinforcement.  

“But if I don’t get any funding, I’ll never be able to build the bridge.  I’ll never see him again.  I want to call Tony.  But I’m not going to call Tony.”

“Jane, your devil’s advocating is getting kind of literal here.”  Darcy said, her voice muffled by the inside of the refrigerator.  It kept the food a few degrees below room temperature.  Which was not exactly what they were going for, refrigerator-wise.

“Damn his insidiousness.  I want to call him.  I’m not going to call him.  What is that look on your face.”  Jane demanded, waving her hand at Darcy in a frantic way.  “Your face is doubting, stop doubting me, I demand your unconditional agreement and support.”

“Okay.  Jane, I support your decision to sell your soul to Tony Stark.  I think it is your best decision ever.”  

“I am not going to call him.”

 

 

Stark Tower was so much the opposite of their crappy apartment that it might as well have been another dimension.  The security people had security people.  The glass surfaces all gleamed.  There was air conditioning.

Still, it was July, and Jane’s idea of dressing nicely included a button up shirt and a tie.  Her hair was actually wet from how much she was sweating.

“This is my fault.  I am being punished by God for calling Tony Stark.  We are literally in hell.  I’m sorry Darcy, I’m sorry for bringing you, here, to hell with me.  What are you doing?”

“I think it’s obvious what I’m doing, Jane.”  Darcy said from the floor.

“Why are you laying on the floor?”

“Because, Jane, the floor is marble, which means the floor is cooler than the surrounding air.  That’s science, you can’t argue with science.”

“You can’t lay on the floor!”

“ _You can’t argue with science Jane._ ” Darcy said, putting her earbuds in to block out any further complaints.

 

 

After a half hour of waiting, during which Jane had joined Darcy on the floor, Tony met them in the lobby.  (Pepper had already come down a few times to check on them.  She was a svelte redhead who looked incapable of sweating.)

Tony got off the elevator looking like he might actually be cold, accompanied by a man wearing military dress and a long-suffering look on his face.  He was wearing a suit, and sunglasses indoors, and even from a distance Darcy could tell he probably smelled good.

“Dr. Foster, Miss Lewis…” He came to an abrupt halt, staring at the two women sprawled on his immaculate floor.  Jane scrambled to her feet, mumbling flustered apologies.

“Is… is that an  _Ipod_?”  Tony demanded, and he reached out.  Acting on instinct, Darcy snatched her music player off of her stomach and hid it behind her back.  “Dude.  No touchie the Ipod.  Do you know how hard these are to find?”

“Why don’t you have a Starkplayer?” He demanded.  “I  _know_  you want a Starkplayer.”

“I do.  I also sometimes want to eat chalk.”

Jane made a choking sound.

He blinked.  “What.”

“My point is that wanting something is sort of tangential to it being a good idea.”

“But… There’s not even software for those anymore!  It has device-specific hardware. It is incompatible with every other piece of technology that exists.  _Macintosh went out of business when you were nine._ Jesus, it must have like, 16 gb of storage, that’s enough for less than… wait.  Ipods couldn’t read FLAC.  You are listening to mp3s.  Tell me you are not listening to mp3s.”

“I am not listening to mp3s.  I am listening to mp4s.  Also, when I was nine, wow, way to date yourself there dude.”

Tony was standing there with his mouth actually hanging open.

“Rhodey, I think he’s speechless.”  Pepper whispered.

“I know.  It’s so beautiful.” He whispered back, his eyes like a man in a dream.

“How… where do you even find music in that format?!”

“The internet.  I just downloaded like, thirty songs.  They’re all old man rock bands too, you’d probably be really into it.”

“This entire conversation is appalling to me.”  Tony said.  It was hard to tell what he was thinking behind his sunglasses, it seemed like he was just… staring.

“If I gave you a Starkplayer, would you use it.”

Darcy raised an eyebrow.  “You want to just give me a Starkplayer.  Like, for free.”

“No, I do not want to give you a Starkplayer, I need to give you one, because the thought that you are out there, listening to mp3s on an Ipod’s original headphones, is causing me physical pain.”  Tony took off his sunglasses to rub at his temples, and Darcy noticed how nice his eyes were.  He had pretty eyelashes, long and dark against his cheek.

“Mmm.  Well I could try it, but I have all my music on here. I just downloaded like, 30 songs.”  She reminded him.

“I will put all of your music on the Starkplayer.  I will put all the music that exists on the Starkplayer.  Give me the Ipod, Lewis.  The Ipod full of all  your horribly compressed audio files.  Give it to me.” He put one hand in front of her face, like a teacher commanding you to spit out your gum.

“I can’t give you my Ipod, it has sentimental value.”

“It does not.”

“It belonged to my dead mother.”

“Your mother lives in Phoenix!” Jane hissed.

Tony reached into his pocket and pulled something out, which he was writing on.

“Oh, Tony, don’t try to bribe her…”  Pepper interposed with dismay, reaching for the paper in his hand.

“It’s not a check!  Here.”  He thrust the paper out at Darcy, who took it skeptically.  His fingernails were definitely more well manicured than hers.

“...Is this your phone number?”

“Yes.  Do you want to call me sometime?”  Tony asked, and smiled.  It was the smile from the tabloids, wicked and wide.

“Well, obviously.”  Darcy admitted.

“I’ve seen her eat chalk.” Jane supplied helpfully.

“Shut up, Jane.”


	5. Vampire AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Jane. I am not your friend, I am your paid subordinate, which I admit is a nice change from being your unpaid subordinate--”
> 
> “Oh, so now I’m paying you to lounge on my couch in banana pajamas?”
> 
> “The point I was getting to, before I was interrupted, excuse you rudeness, is that I am willing to watch this movie with you, in the spirit of serious scientific inquiry, but I am not willing to do so without some form of monetary compensation for my time.”
> 
> “...You want me to pay you to watch Twilight with me.”
> 
> “Yes, I do.”

 

“I don’t think I can do it.  I mean, I love you Jane, and I love men without their shirts on… but it’s like her empty empty eyes are boring into my soul.”

Jane tipped her head at screen, her eyes squinting in concentration.  “I don’t even think you can call that a facial expression.  It’s not accomplishing any of the seven functions a facial expression can have.  It’s like she’s asleep.”

“She does look sort of tired.  But otherwise, yeah, nothing going on with that face, it’s a very staring into the void kind of feeling.  Why seven?  Is this a science thing?”

Jane looked a little embarrassed.  “If I sometimes look up things like facial expression analysis on Scholarpedia to improve my social skills, Darcy, I know you are too good of a friend to mock me for it.”

“Jane.  I am not your friend, I am your paid subordinate, which I admit is a nice change from being your unpaid subordinate--”

“Oh, so now I’m paying you to lounge on my couch in banana pajamas?”

“The point I was getting to, before I was interrupted, excuse you rudeness, is that I am willing to watch this movie with you, in the spirit of serious scientific inquiry, but I am not willing to do so without some form of monetary compensation for my time.”

“...You want me to pay you to watch Twilight with me.”

“Yes, I do.”

 

Darcy packed for a night out with Thor like a mother, in that almost everything in her bag was not actually for herself.  She dressed for a night out with Thor in whatever Thor gave them.

While Jane was paying Darcy, she was not paying Darcy enough to afford ball gowns, or whatever this was.  It had some specific name, but as far as Darcy was concerned it was a prom dress.  Having successfully avoided going to her own prom, Darcy resented that this had become her life.  Today’s offering had what she hoped were rhinestones all over the bust, and a full white skirt.  It made Darcy look like the world’s tackiest bride.

“I am fully prepared for my Vegas wedding.”  Darcy observed, putting the finishing touches on her makeup by making faces to see if her lipstick would crack.

Jane looked like a cat getting petted in the wrong direction.  Her dress was draped and gold, and she looked like a supermodel.

“Why is this happening to me.”

“You do not get to complain about this, Jane, because this is your fault.”  Darcy reminded her.

“You said that after the movie too, but I still felt… violated.”

 

Their nights usually went like this:  They would show up to a party, at some huge mansion that looked like it belonged to a Bond villain.  Thor would swan around with both Jane and Darcy on his arm for an hour.  Then he’d find a couch to deposit Darcy on, and he and Jane would disappear into a back room for a half hour.

Darcy would knit.

Then, Thor would bring Jane back.  Darcy would feed her an energy bar and a banana and take her vitals.  Then either Jane would disappear with Thor some more, or she’d take a nap with her head on Darcy's lap.  Darcy would listen to an audiobook on her headphones, and glare at anyone who tried to talk to them.

Tonight should have been a nap night.  Jane was swaying on her feet when Thor brought her in, and she had picked at her food.   But when Thor came back she was up and clinging to his arm and swearing she was fine in a slurring voice that he should not be buying.

“No.”  Darcy said, grabbing Jane’s arm.  She’d said it more loudly than she’d meant to, but not loud enough to have created the weird stillness that came over the room.   

Maybe they thought they were being subtle.  Few of the vampires in the room were staring at her outright, aside from two guys who had been making out on the couch across from Darcy.  (They were definitely staring.)  But when a vampire freezes, they become an inanimate object.  It was as if Jane and Darcy were the lone humans in a room of hostile statues.

 _Don’t blink_ , a voice in Darcy’s head whispered.  (If she was going to listen to anyone’s advice right now, it would definitely be David Tennant’s.)

“Look, Thor, you know I love you big guy, and Jane, you know you can make whatever choice you wanna make with this and I’ll still be around for it.  But I need you to actually MAKE a choice, instead of pulling this ambivalent ‘oops I forgot my birth control pill’ shit.

“This is a forever kind of thing, and I know that sometimes it feels better to not have to think all serious, and we both know I have no room to talk when it comes to making poor choices-- let’s not bring up Disney World, I remember it Jane, vividly.  You asked me to come with you here so I could have your back.  If this is what you want, then that’s fine, but you gotta want it, or you gotta stay here with me and eat another candy bar and drink some water.  

“Because if you go with him right now, you are going to turn, and I need you to acknowledge that that’s what you want before you leave this room, Jane.  Do we need to have the ‘affirmative consent’ talk again, because I thought we were past that.”

And, wow, that was a lot of talking, a lot of very personal talking, in a room where everyone was paying very, very close attention to her.  Even Thor had that unmoving face, his friendly puppy dog eyes black all the way through.  He looked alien, like that night in New Mexico, when he’d come at them so fast in the dark and she’d tased him.  Her body had felt that he was dangerous, and Darcy was all about listening to her gut.  

The problem was, Thor didn’t always feel dangerous.  There were times, when he was laughing at Saturday morning cartoons, or looking at Jane with that soft, awestruck look that he felt like the safest man she’d ever met.

His face cracked open in a smile, and with a swoop of relief she realized he was laughing.  “Jane, I sometimes forget how much I have come to value your companion’s blunt honesty!  It is fitting that you have one such as she to stand beside you, to shine light on those things which you may turn your sight from.  

“To my shame I must admit that the Lady Darcy is correct, and I have not been safeguarding your mortality as I ought.  It is my wish that you share the nights with me, but perhaps not so soon, before you have properly taken leave of your old life.  Regrets of such things may remain in your mind long past their time, and this is not what I seek for our life together.”  He put his big hand gently against the curve of her cheek, and Jane leaned into it immediately.  Maybe it was the blood thing, but Jane never seemed to feel any of the hesitancy Darcy did when it came to touching Thor.  He was fantastically gorgeous, and Darcy could enjoy the show as much as my other red blooded American girl might, but she couldn’t shut off the part of her that sent up a signal flare that he was dangerous.

She could easily imagine what human Thor must have been like, some Viking in furs who could pick up three of his children and hug them all at once.

“Lady Darcy.  I have taken your admonitions to heart.  Rest assured that the Lady Jane will remain as well under my care as she might under yours.”

This seemed to be a request for Darcy’s permission for the two of them to go off together, which she granted after shoving a package of pop tarts into Jane’s hand.

Having discharged her obligations for the night, Darcy was ready to settle into a corner of her weird fainting couch thing with some knitting and The Complete Sherlock Holmes.  

Darcy was ready, but not able, because the making-out-on-the-other-couch guys immediately sat in the space that Jane had vacated.  

“Ma’am, I’m sorry to intrude without an introduction--”  One of them began, a small blond man.  His posture was contradictory-- he sat with his shoulders drawn in like he wanted to disappear, but his chin jutted forward.   He made eye contact so intensely it was almost combative.  Conversely, his (boy)friend had the relaxed posture and smile of someone generally used to pleasing.

They both looked incredibly clean cut, but Darcy had become used to a pretty high standard of grooming at Thor parties.   _Everyone_ at a Thor party smelled nice and dressed like a celebrity.  These two fit the bill on both counts. She was also used to people who fell back on whatever time period they had been most comfortable in.  

Which for these two seemed to be the 40s.  They both had starched pants with creases ironed into them.

So, vampires.  

“Steve, c’mon buddy, you’re on the lady’s dress!”  The brunette protested, tugging the edge of Darcy’s skirt out from under Steve's leg.  “I’m sorry ma’am, he’s really harmless, he just gets a little flustered when it comes to talking to dames.”  He smiled at her in an effort to be charming, which only served to confirm Darcy’s suspicions.  He had some sharp eye teeth.

Steve gave him some pretty impressive side eye.  “Buck, remember that thing you do, when you think you are helping but it’s not helpful?  You’re doing it now.” He said, in the tone of voice Darcy’s mother used with her father when he tried to work at the dinner table.

Buck rolled his eyes, but shut up.

“Anyway, as I was saying ma’am, we’re sorry to intrude.  Um.”  When he reached up to rub the back of his neck Darcy noticed the size of his hands.  They looked like they’d been put on the wrong body.  There was an immature part of her that thought this was an important detail.

 _“Can I help now.”_  Buck stage-whispered.  Steve gave him a side-eye that Maleficent would have been proud of.

“We were wondering if we could join you.  It seems like you might be alone-- er, I mean, obviously you came with-- not that--” He paused, wrinkling his forehead in concentration.  “We just thought you might like some company, so we thought we’d introduce ourselves.  I’m Steve Rogers, and this is James Barnes.”  Steve gestured to Buck.

“Bucky.”  He supplied, extending his hand for Darcy to shake.  “And we actually came over because that was pretty gutsy.”

Darcy was feeling them out pretty hard, but her gut didn’t have much to say.  Bucky seemed a little too smooth, but there was something about his solicitude towards Steve that made her think he was a nice guy.  Steve was a little intense, but he felt ‘safe’.

Darcy shrugged, settling her Ipod into her bag again.  “Sure, my date with Sherlock can probably hold.  Book on tape.”  She added.

Steve grinned, looking relieved.  “Ah, okay.  So, no date.  I mean, you came with-- but it seemed like he was with-- her dress was, ah, lovely?”

“Yeah, that’s Jane.  Thor is her whatever.  Her beau.”  That seemed like the right word for this guy.  He was a little pink already.

Which was kind of ironic, since it seemed like he and his boyfriend had come over to hit on her together.

Darcy thought she might let them, but the night was young.


	6. Meeting in a Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy has been dreaming of him her entire life.

What Darcy had couldn’t be called recurring dreams, because they didn’t recur.  They continued.

When she was a child, they had been like a fairy tale.  A dark forest full of lights, and trees that were people sweeping their arms around her.  Maybe it should have been terrifying, but it was always a dream.  It operated off of dream logic that drew her along a little further each night until she found him.

Darcy couldn’t define why she thought this tree was a boy.  It was a tree.

For a long time, he was too small to climb.  Darcy was happy to stay with him anyway, most of the time.  He could do things-- grow flowers, make the little lights.  She thought she talked to him, but in the mornings she couldn’t remember what she’d said.

Then there was a long stretch of time when she didn’t see him at all.  Her subconscious supplied Darcy with dreams about not studying for tests.  Dreams about boys that were not trees.  Dreams about riding a burrito through the ocean…  They were good dreams, but she missed him.

He was gone for years, all through high school.  In the beginning Darcy found herself trying to connect with him.  She took Botany classes, and went for hikes.  She fell in love with Lord of the Rings, and the Ents.

Darcy dated.  Some of them were nice guys.  Some of them were jerks.  But none of them made her feel safe the way she had in those dreams.

Not that she could tell anyone that.  “Sorry, you don’t measure up to my imaginary tree friend.”

The next time she dreamed about him, he was on a spaceship.  (If she ever saw a therapist they would have a field day with this shit.)  These dreams were way more action-packed, full of gunfire and explosions, and other people.  Well, humanoids?  Because most of them did not look like humans, but they still seemed to be people. (Darcy wasn’t a speciesist, she’d read too much sci fi for that.)

They were still dreams.  When she woke up the details faded quickly, and all she could really remember was that he’d been there.

After everything with Jane and Thor in New Mexico, Darcy was expecting to have nightmares.  Some kind of backlash from the whole ‘roving death bot’ thing.  

There were nights when it was hard to feel safe enough to let go and fall asleep, but the dreams were still there.

Until the night when her dreams were all light and fire, and Darcy awoke with the first words she could remember him having spoken.

“WE ARE GROOT.”

 

Darcy took some time off school.  Jane was understanding.  Darcy’s mother was… less so.  Most mothers would not be happy with a daughter who decides to drop out of college in her senior year, quits her job, and moves home to sleep all day.

She started waking Darcy up earlier every day by hiding clock radios all over her room.

A few months after moving home, one of her mother's alarms woke her blaring Blue Swede.   In her dreams she had tasted dirt.

She felt happy again.

 

Darcy awoke to the smell of fire.  It was still dark, the wind blowing in through her open window reminding her of fall.

But it was spring.

 _What am I doing,_ She thought while she shoved her feet into her hiking boots.   _What do I think I can do?_

Coat on, she was out the door in her pajamas and running into the smoke.  It choked her as soon as she hit the edge of the woods, but Darcy pushed forward.

 _Why why why_  kept repeating in her head.  Her heart was pounding in her ears when she broke into the clean air around the crash site.

The area around the ship was so decimated that nothing was left to  _be_  on fire.  The trees just outside the blast radius weren’t so lucky.  Whatever fuel a goddamn space ship used seemed to be incredibly flammable.

After Thor, Darcy didn't have an reason to doubt that a spaceship was what it was.

Darcy ripped off her coat and used it to grip the hot pieces of the wreckage, digging for someone inside.  

She could feel it, screaming in her chest.  _Someone_  was in there.

She found the first one easily.  He was draped over some kind of console, his blue skin mottled with red marks that looked like burns-- but he was alive.  His face had small movements, struggling for consciousness.

When Darcy jumped inside, the whole structure shifted with a groan that spiked her system with a shot of adrenaline.  Jittery and not sure if this guy would even have a pulse, Darcy pressed her fingers against his neck.  And felt a flutter.

There didn’t seem to be much else Darcy could do for him.  And what she was looking for was much smaller.

After taking a few steps that seemed to make the ship whine and buck again, Dacy sunk to her knees.  Her cow print pajamas came to her, in this moment, as a particularly shitty thing to die in.  

Shifting her weight slowly, Darcy moved with the slope of the ship.  She ran her fingers along the debris on the floor, cutting them on sharp metal edges.  _He was in a pot, he must have rolled._

 _He rolled._ Darcy choked down the word she didn’t want to think.   _Smashed._

Above her Darcy could hear something moving.  Someone else alive and fighting their way out of the metal coffin that she had crawled into.  

At the lowest part of the ship, Darcy felt a smooth ceramic surface.  It took almost five minutes to pull him loose without crushing his body.

“Groot.”  Darcy whispered his name like it was a secret.

Then he opened his eyes.  

And smiled.


	7. I Want To Believe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You believe your father to have been an extraterrestrial.” Coulson’s voice was completely inflectionless.

Darcy had believed in aliens long before she met Thor.  She just tried not to be obvious about it.

There was no good way to say “I want to believe we are not alone in the universe, mostly because I’m so alone here on earth.”

But, after a while, she realized that she didn’t need to hide it, because everyone thought it was a joke.

“Mother ship, make it happen!  This is the time to abduct me!” or “I’m a Raelian.” Darcy would say, and everyone would laugh like she didn’t mean it.

After Thor… well.  Her room looked like a Believers convention had exploded in it.

Darcy and Jane were watching Earth Girls are Easy in Darcy’s bed when Coulson stopped by with some paperwork for Jane to sign and a judgemental attitude.

“Preparing for visitors, Miss Lewis?”  He asked, eyebrows raised.

“No, you’re right, my interest in aliens is totally ridiculous, it’s not like I personally know one or anything.” She replied.  This was someone who worked for fucking S.H.I.E.L.D.  He had more aliens on the payroll than the MIB-- and still,  _still,_ Darcy was a joke.  She wanted to throw her ET plushie at his head.

Darcy decided, at that moment, that she was so done with this coy shit.

When the stuffed animal hit him, Coulson looked on the verge of a facial expression.

“Darcy!”  Jane said, hovering somewhere between shocked and amused.  It was one of the million reasons that Darcy had stuck with her while being paid nothing.  Obviously ‘make awesome science’ and ‘meet exciting aliens’ were on her pro list, but they were lower than ‘get to hang out with Jane’.

“Your interest in extra terrestrials did not begin with Thor, Miss Lewis.  I believe our background checks turned up quite a few interesting convention photos.  This, however,” Coulson’s eyes panned around her room, taking in the movie posters, stuffed animals, and the conspiracy theory books stacked on every available surface.  “is a new development.”

Darcy shrugged, feeling a little uncomfortable being exposed in this way.  It was like the difference between knowing the government was monitoring your activity, and standing there while someone looked through your browser history.  “Look, I just want to know who my dad was.”

“You believe your father to have been an extraterrestrial.”  Coulson’s voice was completely inflectionless.

Darcy shrugged again.  It wasn’t a casual gesture anymore because her shoulders were so stiff.

“I see.  Have you had any form of DNA testing?”  He continued, still in that same colorless voice.  Darcy had always thought that Coulson played his cards close to the vest, but she’d never seen him this… blank.  It had always been possible for her to pick up on something from him.  A little quirk of his mouth or eyebrow, some subtle piece of sarcasm.  Right now she had no idea if he was the first man to take her seriously, or the first man to seriously consider having her committed.

She shook her head.

“Would you like to have your DNA tested?”  He continued.  Jane, who had been watching the whole exchange with wide eyes, furrowed her forehead.  “How can you accurately test for that?”

Coulson gave one of his tight smiles.  “We can’t, but we can eliminate several possibilities.  If Miss Lewis would have an interest in that.  We have another candidate for testing ready to be processed this afternoon. We could ‘kill two birds with one stone’ if that would be a convenient time for you.”

Being a candidate for ‘processing’ by a government agency did not strike Darcy as a good thing.  But when the car came for her, she got in.

 

Darcy started to question whether Coulson was trolling her after an hour of waiting alone in a conference room.  It contained only a table, and two of the most unforgettable chairs she had ever sat it.

She became sure that he was trolling her when the door opened, and a guy in a full length leather coat introduced himself as ‘Starlord’.

“Um, okay, sure.  So, Starlord, what brings you to my humble abode?” Darcy gestured grandly to the white room. “And what’s your actual name.”

He glanced around like they weren’t listening to everything they said.  Because they totally were, it was a S.H.I.E.L.D conference room.  They’d probably sent this guy in here just to gauge how nutso she was.

“I’m getting my DNA tested.” He admitted.  He was sitting with his legs spread open, jiggling his knees.  Studying his face, Darcy let go of the idea that someone had sent him in.  He didn’t seem capable of concealing ulterior motives, his expression was way too open.

Darcy kind of liked that in a man.  It was what she found so endearing in Thor-- the body was a nice bonus of course.  Darcy gave… Ugh, there was no way she could call him Starlord… a quick look-over.  He was not physically unfortunate himself.

“So, what’s your actual name.” Darcy repeated, trying to bleed her voice of all color like Coulson had.  That had been damn intimidating.

“Peter.” He admitted.  “And you?”

“Darcy Lewis, possible alien.”

“We can amend that to ‘confirmed parahuman’ in your case, Miss Lewis.”

Darcy thought the Coulson had managed to ninja into the room despite the fact that her chair was facing the door until the intercom crackled to life again.  

“A confirmation that can also be extended to Mr. Quill.  Congratulations.”

“Cool.  So are we like, the same thing?”  Darcy felt like staring at the ceiling might look weird, but that was probably where the camera was.  Her mom had always said that eye contact was important.

“You appear to be the same species, but are not otherwise genetically matched.  The origin of that species is not clear to us at this time.”

Darcy kept her eyes on the ceiling and leaned over towards Peter.  “I think we need to get out of here before they dissect us.”

“Don’t worry, I have friends.”  He whispered back.


	8. Trapped on a Desert Island Trope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Just get into this small plane, they said.” Darcy mumbled, using a piece of metal to dig into the sand for something useful. And by useful, she meant not a scrap the size of a quarter.

“Just get into this small plane, they said.”  Darcy mumbled, using a piece of metal to dig into the sand for something useful.  And by useful, she meant not a scrap the size of a quarter.

Darcy’d heard of crumple zones, but the entire aircraft seemed to have completely disintegrated on impact, pockmarking the beach with shrapnel.  She should have felt grateful to make it out alive, but to be honest she was sort of offended.  Any plane designed by Tony should be able to weather a nuclear holocaust, not to shatter like one of her grandmother’s antique Christmas ornaments just because a bird had hit the engine.

She was very disappointed in him, and intended to tell him so if they didn't die of exposure.

“It’s fully automated, they said.”  Darcy muttered, throwing a ball of plastic the size of her fist into her pile of ‘possible useful’ garbage.  “It doesn’t need a pilot, they said.  Pepper’s going, they said.”

Pepper snorted.  She sitting a few feet away with a long black smudge down the side of her face, checking through Dary’s collection of plane pieces.

“This could be useful.”  Pepper said, eyeing a bowl-shaped piece of metal.  “Something to cook in.”

 _Oh god.  We’re cooking._  Darcy had watched enough episodes of Survivor Man to recognize what was happening.  They were setting up a camp, they were settling in.

They were going to be on this island for a while-- at least overnight.

Pepper seemed to be, if anything, relaxed.  She was barefoot, her blouse tied up to expose the bottom of her stomach.  Like picking through rubble was an everyday thing for her.

Well, she lived with Tony.  It was.

With her heels off they were almost the same height.  It unnerved her, this version of Pepper, casually sitting down in the sand.  

Her legs were actually dirty.

Pepper was an occasional presence in Darcy’s life since she and Jane had started working for Tony.  Well, since Jane had started working for Tony.  Darcy had no illusions about her relative value on the job market.  She was rarely in the labs, and Darcy didn’t exactly hang out with the Avengers.  They were far more likely to pass each other on their way to the good coffee on the 24th floor.  (That was how big Stark Tower was-- there were good and bad places to buy coffee.   _Inside the building._ )  

The point was, Pepper was not in Darcy’s social sphere.  She was elegant, organized, and in general gave off a kind of Audrey Hepburn vibe that left Darcy feeling like she had pen marks on her face.

Dirt on her tan legs with her hair a mess-- this was not a Pepper Darcy had prepared to deal with.

Especially when it started to get dark. As soon as the sun hit the water, the temperature had plummeted.

Across the fire Pepper was lingering over her bowl of coconut-and-banana-mush, staring up at the night sky with that little smile on her face.

 _Ugh, why are you so perfect._ Darcy thought, trying to find the best way to ask her if they were going to need to huddle together for warmth that didn’t make her sound like Tony.

“I’m exhausted.” Pepper said, smiling so kindly that even under the circumstances, Darcy felt reassured.  

This was a woman who put up with Tony on a daily basis while still maintaining a truly awe inspiring level of calm and professionalism.  They could make this not-weird.

“Yeah, samezies.  You wanna do the whole ‘help and huddle’ thing?”  Darcy asked, gesturing awkwardly to the ‘bed’ they’d assembled.  Composed of a sweater, a space blanket, and a surprisingly flexible bit of plastic that had been part of the plane’s interior, it was an uncomfortable prospect even without the elephant in the room that was Darcy's attraction to Pepper.

“Of course.  I’d like to try and clean up a little, then I’ll join you.”  Pepper said, like she was excusing herself to the bathroom instead an awkwardly dug hole in the ground.

Darcy scrubbed out her bowl with some sand, then lay down with her back to the fire.

 _Not weird._  Darcy reminded herself,  snuggling her face into her cardigan as a pillow.   _This is not weird._

Darcy woke up in the middle of the night with Pepper’s arms wrapped around her waist, one hand resting on the bare skin of her stomach.  How she had fallen asleep under the circumstance was a mystery.  Maybe being in a plane crash and then foraging for food all day was way more physically exhausting than she'd thought.

“Burmph.”  Came out of her mouth, loud enough that Pepper shifted in her sleep, tightening her grip on Darcy.  Her upper body strength was surprising.

Darcy shivered a little, and Pepper’s grip loosened on her abdomen.

“Darcy?  Are you cold?”  She asked, and _oh god_ , her lips were brushing the side of Darcy’s neck.  Her voice was husky with sleep, unfocused.

“No, I’m okay.  Go back to sleep.”  Darcy whispered.

“It’s okay, they’ll find us soon.”  Pepper murmured, burying her face into Darcy’s hair and relaxing back into sleep.

 _God, I hope not._ Darcy thought.


	9. Soulmate Identifying Marks Trope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bitter woman would say that they looked like a shackle. Darcy was not bitter, and did not think that at all.

Meeting Jane had been like discovering her favorite food (which for the record was gummy bears).  Darcy wasn't blind to her faults as a person.  She knew Jane wasn't perfect, just like she knew that gummy bears were, in the words of Seasame Street, a 'sometimes food'.

Jane wasn't a perfect person, but she was the perfect person for Darcy.

She was also the perfect person for someone else, as evidenced by the words that circled her right arm.  A bitter woman would say that they looked like a shackle.  Darcy was not bitter, and did not think that at all.

Sometimes when Jane had to roll up her sleeves to wash the dishes (or more often, when she was sanitizing the pipettes in the lab), Darcy saw her looking at them.  

They demanded attention in a way that Darcy’s didn’t.

**YOU!  WHAT WORLD IS THIS?**

And above that, so much smaller, tucked into the curve of her elbow;

_Hold on, I think I can fix this._

There were thousands of studies about what a person’s soul marks did to their psychological development.  Darcy generally thought that they were bullshit, but she could see how staring at the words “What world is this” might have made Jane who she was.

Darcy was more of a ‘best supporting actress’ type of soulmate.

She could accept that.   It had been obvious from the beginning that this was going to be a platonic connection.  

Darcy had actually felt relieved.  Not that Jane wasn’t beautiful-- of course she was.

Darcy just had a better track record as a friend.

The night they found Thor, Darcy took the cuff off her arm, and looked at her soul marks.  Jane’s neat handwriting circled her wrist in a perfect circle:

_What do you think you’re doing?_

They left plenty of room for the words that had always terrified her.

**Stop. Just let me die.**

 

The devastation in New York was almost unfathomable.  Darcy had thought that the whole dark elves thing had prepared her for the kind of destruction that an apocalypse situation involved, but she’d been wrong.

Every corner they turned seemed to have something broken.  A metal post box still attached to the cement but bent at a right angle.  An open storefront with plastic taped over the display windows.  

It was the people that were the worst.  The way they just picked through the rubble, still busy, still not making eye contact with each other.  $160 billion dollars in damage, deaths in the hundreds of thousands… and New York just got on with it.

No one should have to get used to something like this.

While Darcy was plastered to the window, Jane was burying herself in paperwork.

“Jane, stop freaking out.”  Darcy said, trying to pry Jane’s hand off of her stack of non-disclosure forms.  

“Darcy, no, look, I think that I can only have access to half of my research, I don’t think I read this form right when I signed it…”  Jane protested, her reading glasses slipping down her nose.

“Jane.  It doesn’t matter what you signed, because I didn’t sign anything.”  Darcy said.

“Why does that matter?”  Jane was still clinging to the papers, the tips of her fingers going white.

“Because, as your research assistant, I took the liberty of adding my name as a co-author.  You know, and I know, and S.H.I.E.L.D. knows, that I do nothing useful, so they never bothered to make me sign anything.  I don’t think they ever noticed, you know.” She held up her right arm, her soul marks covered by a plain black arm warmer.

“You… Oh my god.”  Jane seemed caught in between being horrified and delighted.

“I know.” Darcy said modestly, smirking.  “You love me.”

“Is that what this feeling is called…”  Jane mused, but she finally put the papers away and looked a little cheerful for the first time since they’d gotten off the plane.

Darcy had always liked Thor-- it was hard not to like Thor.  He was absolutely without guile, like a huge labrador puppy.  In a way, she had even liked it that he had left.  Though it had made Jane a little crazy, Darcy had needed some alone time with her girl to get emotionally ready to share.  Still, she resented him for not seeming as into Jane as she was into him, right up until they got to Stark Tower.

As soon as they walked in, Thor swept Jane up into one of those Hollywood kisses.  Complete with spinning.

“The two of you are like, disgusting, you’re so adorable.” Darcy commented, when the stars and bluebirds had cleared from around Jane’s head and she was ready for rational conversation again.

“Darcy!”  Thor boomed, pulling her in for a hug that was just as enthusiastic.

On the elevator up to their meeting with Stark, Thor and Jane were too busy devouring each other with their eyes or whatever for Jane to get nervous.  Once they were in the conference room, however, Darcy thought Jane was going to break her hand.

Tony Stark was actually in-person there, giving both of them an unimpressed once over from behind his red sunglasses.  

“Man of Iron!  May I present to you the Lady Jane, home of my soul.”  Bless him, he flourished at her like Vanna White.  

Tony’s smile at Thor, at least, seemed genuine.  “I see her, big guy, nice choice, very Helen of Troy.”

Darcy gave Jane an assessing look.  “I don’t think Jane is black enough.”

Tony quirked an eyebrow like he was thinking about asking, shook his head slightly, and ignored Darcy completely.

That set the tone for the rest of the day.  Tony showed Jane the labs, her new equipment, and in general talked only to Thor and Jane while giving Darcy an occasional ‘why the fuck are you here’ look.

It wasn’t really unusual.  Darcy was used to being the caboose on Jane’s genius train.  Her skills, while awesome, lay in other areas.  But by the third hour Darcy’s patience was starting to wear thin, and even Jane had started to pick up on it.

It was when Tony started showing them around their living space that things actually came to a head.

“So, where’s Darcy’s room?”  Jane interrupted Tony, who was waxing poetic about the espresso machine.

He blinked at her.  “...Why would Darcy have a room?  I’m not moving Darcy into my house.  No offense kid, I’m sure you’re lovely.”

Jane’s mouth dropped open, then closed, and her eyes narrowed.

“ _Oh shit._ ”  Darcy whispered, and withdrew behind Thor.

“ _That._ ”  Jane hissed, pointing at Darcy, “ _is my soulmate._  She is non-negotiable.  She was written into every agreement we made for a reason.”  

She had started punctuating every word with a jab at Tony’s chest so violent that he brought his hands up to cover his arc reactor.  

“Hey, woah, what?”  He was backing up in the face of her wrath, looking so bewildered that Darcy actually felt bad for him.

“Hey, Jane-y Jane, it’s okay,” Darcy said, wrapping her arms around Jane’s waist.  “Tony didn’t know, _Tony is sorry_.”  She raise her eyebrows at him leadingly.

“Yes, absolutely, Tony is sorry.”  Tony repeated, holding his hands up placatingly.  “Tony was unaware that the three of you were putting the ‘try’ in triangle.  Although now Tony is confused because can’t you just share--hey!”

Jane started trying to hit Tony, and Darcy didn’t stop her.

 

After that, Tony started talking to Darcy.  He still gave her that ‘what are you doing here’ look, but it was more… assessing.  He was one of the few people in the tower old fashioned enough to still wear a cuff over his soul mark, like Darcy did.  She found herself wondering what he had under there.

They were leaning against one of the lab counters together after a particularly long night of science, staring at the coffee pot, when Tony finally addressed it.

“So, when are you going to show me what you’re working with Lewis?”  He said.  Darcy, head resting in her hands as she tried desperately not to fall asleep, just raised her eyebrows at him.  “When are you going to show me why you’re here.  Because you don’t seem like the type who just aimlessly follows her platonic girlfriend around.”

“What can I say.  As Jane goes, so goes my nation.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about Lewis.  You are not a scientist.  This,”  He gestured to encompass the sterile space of the lab space behind them, “is not where your heart is.”  He reached over to tap the fabric of the cuff covering her right arm.  “So why don’t you show me.”

Darcy gave him a long look, trying to figure out his agenda.  His face was tired.

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”  Darcy responded, smiling at him cheekily.  Giving him an out, if he wanted to take at as innuendo instead of a serious offer.  She wasn’t really sure why she wanted to know.  Maybe just because he seemed lonely.

Tony stared at her, and then untied his cuff.  It was like looking a the layers of a tree.

 **Are you crazy, or just stupid?** _Sir, these numbers don’t match up._ Mr. Stark.

Darcy reached over and turned his arm a little in the light, taking in the different handwriting, the sizes.  The first two were neat and conservative.  The writing was dark and distinct, but not exaggerated.

The ‘Mr. Stark’ had letters almost two inches high.

“Huh.”  Darcy said, pursing her lips consideringly.  The first two struck her as Rhodey and Pepper, but the last one was about as ambiguous as it got.

A woman of her word, Darcy pushed her cuff down.  Tony smirked a little at Jane’s familiar handwriting, and then his face froze.

 _Aand this is why I keep it covered._  Darcy thought.  Seeing Tony look stricken was uncomfortable.  It was the look everyone gave her, once they knew.

“Jesus Lewis.  Can I hug you?  This seems like a time when people hug.”  He tried for a smile, and Darcy returned it with considerably more enthusiasm.

For someone with such an extensive reputation as a lady’s man, he gave a surprisingly stiff hug.  It crossed Darcy’s mind that sex might be the only way Tony knew how to get affection and touch.  When she thought of how much time she got to spend just lounging around with Jane, or Thor’s constant and easy physical affection, it seemed especially sad to think of Tony that way.

“I need to go to bed.”  Jane commented, when she shuffled into the kitchen to check on the coffee situation and found the two of them still embracing.

“Jane, we’re bonding, come bond.”  Darcy demanded, opening her free arm.

After that things were better.

 

Darcy was, generally speaking, not in the loop of what happened with most of the Avengers.  She’d seem Natasha and Clint in the building a few times, but they’d never actually spoken to each other.  Banner and Jane were on-again-off-again science bros, so she saw him around, and Steve had politely shaken her hand one day while waiting to talk at Tony about something.

That relationship had some weird, unexamined tensions in it that were not really any of her business.

No one told her when things happened, but sometimes you could tell.  Tony would come back from a mission and for a few days the lab would be full of banging rock music and the smell of welding.  Or Thor and Jane would disappear for a few days.

Darcy had no idea what the others did after a bad one.

There had definitely been a bad one.  All she had to do was turn on the tv to know that.  Darcy was a Political Science major.  She knew how to read between the lines.

Even without knowing Steve well, it was obvious that whatever had gone down in DC had hit him particularly hard.  He seemed on the edge of bolting at any moment.

When Darcy ran into him, they were both on their way out of the building.  Thor and Jane were off wherever doing their whatever, and she was bored enough to leave the tower.  Tony’s servers contained every movie in existence, and all of the computer games, and anything else a girl might need for entertainment, but even Darcy needed to emerge for some fresh air and sunlight once in a while.

“Hey Steve,”  She said, trying to be friendly.  Steve seemed really lonely sometimes, the way that Tony had seemed touch starved.

He gave her a distracted sort of smile.  “Hey, Darcy.”  The slight pause before her name would have been hurtful, but they’d only talked like, twice.  “Are you--”

Then he went completely still.  Following his gaze, Darcy saw him staring at a man on the sidewalk.  He was wearing an army jacket, hands in his pockets-- a normal enough guy.  His posture was somehow... threatening.  Both defensive and predatory at the same time.  

Instinctually Darcy moved behind Steve.

He snapped back to awareness.  “Darcy.  I need you to back into the building, okay?  Don’t turn around.  Don’t run.  Just walk slowly backwards--”

There was the harsh crack of a gunshot, and the man fell to the ground.

“Bucky!” Steve screamed, producing his shield from somewhere and sprinting out onto the sidewalk.  Bullets dinged off the curved surface and ricocheted into the crowd, who were screaming and scattering as the reality settled in.  

Steve was staring down at the man with an agonized look on his face, torn between going after the assassins and protecting him.

“Steve!  Bring him here!”  Darcy called out, her hand on the lobby door.  If they could just get him inside, he’d be safe.  One of the upgrades Tony had made when they rebuilt the tower the last time was that every piece of glass in the building was bullet proof.

At this moment, Darcy blessed his paranoid little heart.

After a moment of indecision, Steve dragged the man into the lobby.  “Take care of him.”  He ordered in his Captain America voice, and then he sprinted off to do something heroic.

Darcy assumed that the security people had already had the good sense to call for medical help, but he was still bleeding pretty heavily.  They seemed to have shot him in the stomach.

Not sure what else to do, she pulled off her sweater and used it to put pressure on the wound.  Darcy had sort of forgotten to be afraid of him.  He was bleeding all over Tony’s marble lobby, it didn’t exactly scream threatening.

When the metal of his left arm clamped over Darcy’s wrist she twitched in surprise, changing her focus from the blood oozing between her fingers to the man’s face.  He stared at her with some of the coldest eyes she had ever seen.

“Stop.”  He commanded, squeezing her wrist for emphasis.  “Just let me die.”

Darcy had thought about it a lot.  What she was going to do when it happened, what she was going to say.  She was going to be calm, and in control.  She was going to comfort him.  She was not going to cry.  That was the most important part.

Before she opened her mouth to reply, Darcy was already crying.

“I can’t.  I won’t.  Don’t you ask me to, you son of a bitch, you are not dying on me right now.”  She gasped out, pressing down way too hard probably.  His grip on her arm went abruptly slack, and for a panicked moment Darcy thought he was dead.

But he’d only let go, staring at her.

“It says that.  On my arm.”  He said, his brow furrowed.

Dary leaned down, and without moving her hands, pulled the ties to her cuff with her teeth.  He watched it fall, taking in his own words on her skin.

Darcy felt like she was being examined in minute detail, his eyes darting over her hair, her glasses, the blood on her hands.

“I don’t know you.”  He grunted.

Darcy shrugged.  “I don’t know you either.  I’m Darcy.”

“...James.”  He said it with a little hesitation, like he wasn’t quite sure that was the right name.

“--Couldn’t get them all, but I think--”  Steve came barreling back into the lobby, taking in Darcy’s position and the complete lack of medical personnel.

“Get a medic down here.  NOW.”  He bellowed at one of the security people, who stammered some excuse about having already radioed for them.

“Buck.  Bucky.  Are you with me?”  Steve asked, his voice much more gentle now, putting his hand against the side of James’s face.  James made an uncertain expression.  Like he didn’t want to be touched, but thought that he _should_ want it.

“...Steve.”  He said with a little difficulty.  He was still staring at her.

Darcy was actually having a hard time looking at him, that’s how bright Steve was smiling.  “Hey, Bucky.”

“Do you know Darcy?”  He asked.

Steve glanced at Darcy, puzzled.  “Um, yeah, I know Darcy.”

“She has my words.”  He said, and Steve stiffened.  When his eyes fastened onto Darcy’s arm, all the blood drained out of his face.

“Bucky.”  Steve said helplessly, aghast.  He looked at Darcy’s face, finally taking in the mess of mascara on her cheeks.  Her eyes were still running, the kind of silent crying that Darcy didn’t know how to stop.

“This is no way to treat a lady, punk.”  Steve joked, moving his hands slowly over James’s abdomen to take her place.  Free, Darcy sat back against the wall, aware that she was shaking.  Her bloody hands curled up like bird feet in her lap.

When the medics came for him, Steve let them take James but not Darcy.  He took Darcy up to his room and washed the blood off of her hands.  She felt like there was something wrong with her, like her eyes wouldn’t focus properly.  Steve seemed calm and capable though.  Darcy thought it would be okay to do what Steve told her.

Bundling her in one of his jackets, he had Darcy lay down in his bed with her feet propped up on a pillow.  At some point he’d taken her shoes off.

Steve put his hand on her forehead, like her mother checking a fever.  It was a comforting gesture.  She found herself leaning into it.

“You’re a little shocky, but I think you’ll be fine if you just sleep.  Bucky is going to be okay too, Darcy.  Thank you for… Thank you.”  Abruptly he pulled back his hand, running it through his hair.

“Get some sleep.  I’ll wake you if anything happens, I promise.”  Steve said.

That seemed like a good idea.  Darcy fell asleep to the smell of Steve and blood.


	10. Online Relationship prompt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time that Darcy notices Hawkguy, she’s posting about her dog Maggie.

The first time Hawkguy responds to one of Darcy’s blog posts she doesn't notice.  It’s a Thor heavy post, and they’re always a big draw.  She has no illusions about what most of her follows are here for.  Whenever Darcy goes home to visit her family, or Thor is out of town, her viewership takes a big hit.  Enough people complain about ‘wasting their time’ reading about Darcy’s life that now she puts up a warning when it's all about herself.

Of course, those are just her public blogs.  Sometimes Darcy just needs to talk out loud to the internet, and adjusts her privacy settings accordingly.  Friends and family only.

The first rule of making it into the inner sanctum of Friends and Family is that you cannot talk about Darcy’s personal blogs on her public blogs.  The second rule is… yeah, you already know the joke.  Because Darcy doesn’t want her followers to feel excluded.  There are just some things that she doesn’t want to share with every internet troll on earth.

The first time that Darcy notices Hawkguy, she’s posting about her dog Maggie.

Maggie loves Christmas.  It’s not a generic love of the season, Maggie  _understands_ Christmas.  She knows what the Christmas tree means, she knows about presents-- and most important, she knows that Christmas means Darcy will be coming home.  When Darcy has her mother film their reunion this year, the face-licking joy of a 13 year old dog should leave not a dry eye in the house.

There’s one problem:  Maggie is kind of grotesque at this point.  Like a lot of old dogs she’d started developing tumors as she got older, and the surgery to remove them would kill her.  Most of her body is a little… bumpy… but the biggest tumor by far is lodged in her neck.

In fairness, it  _does_ look like a second head.  Darcy had actually named it Bob at one point.   That joke got un-funny as soon as her mother took a long, hard look at Maggie and commented that maybe it was time to put her down.

Maggie is old, with arthritis and cancer and god knows what else, but Darcy loves her.  It’s the kind of irrational love you can only develop by growing up with an animal.  If Maggie was anyone else’s dog, Darcy would think they were an asshole for letting their pet limp through life with so many obvious and debilitating maladies.  So she gets where the people who call her an animal abuser are coming from, she really does.  She expected a little of that.

What Darcy did not expect was that the video would go viral.  Gifs of Maggie photoshopped into Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame become the meme of the week, and her mother spends three hours scrolling through the comments on Darcy’s blog before announcing that it’s time to take Maggie to the vet.

They have one last Christmas, and then Darcy gets to sit with Maggie while she dies.  She has a complete meltdown afterwards on the internet, pissed at the world in general.  If she’s going to feel bad, everyone is.

She crafts that blog like a missile.  There are photos of Maggie as a puppy, wearing an adorable red ribbon around her neck.  Photos of Darcy and Maggie at the beach, or playing fetch, and pictures of every goddamn Christmas they’ve ever celebrated, Maggie proudly holding bones way too big for her mouth.  

Then she attaches the video:  a solid half hour of Darcy and Maggie at the vet’s office, from the moment the needle goes in, until they pull Maggie off Darcy and shut off the camera.  

The Darcy in the clip is doing the kind of ugly crying that people don’t do in public, sobbing until she starts to wretch a little bit with her mom rubbing her back and her dead dog in her lap.

Darcy changes the privacy level to public, hits post, and walks away from the computer for a week.  She spends that week in her pajamas watching Dog Cops and eating junk food.

When she does get back online, it’s as bad as she’d expected.  Some people are sympathetic, but most of them think she’s being a drama queen.  Even those people who seem to feel bad for Darcy don’t really get it.  They know she’s upset, but they’ve never felt that way about an animal.

A couple even accuse Darcy of faking it, which makes her so angry that for the first time in her life, she blocks someone.

Hawkguy, though, knows exactly what to say.  He strikes the right balance between humor and real, human sympathy.

It’s a weird thing to do, but Darcy sends him a private message to see if he might want Maggie’s stuff for his dog Lucky.  Throwing it out would be heartbreaking.

Hawkguy is out of town at the time, so it takes a while for him to get the package.  When he does, he sends Darcy a picture of Lucky wearing Maggie’s favorite sweater.

Darcy upgrades him to Friends and Family and never regrets it.  He seems like a busy guy, someone who doesn’t always have internet access, so that he responds to some posts weeks after Darcy puts them up.  But as soon as he does, it’s always the perfect thing to say.

Since Darcy still has his address, she gets in the habit of dropping him a postcard every once in a while, when she sees something she thinks he’ll find funny.  

She starts getting little packages in the mail from him.  Nothing extravagant-- a seashell bracelet, or a playing card he found with a picture on it that looks a lot like Darcy.  The addresses they come from are so varied that Darcy wonders what he does, to travel so much.  Her postcards always go to New York, so that must be his home base.

When Darcy gets the news that Jane has a job offer in New York (and so does Darcy, by proxy) her first thought is that maybe she can see Hawkguy and Lucky in the flesh.

She’s afraid to ask him to meet in person though.  The address he gave her is a post office box, and he’s never given her his real name.  Which makes sense, she is random stranger on the internet.  You shouldn’t just give out your home address.

Darcy had given him hers, but she doesn’t have the best self preservation skills.

She’s pretty sure he’s married, anyway.  Or at least pretty serious with the woman he’s seeing, who he calls Nat.  He’s also made a few comments that make Darcy think he's older.  She’s never seen a picture of him.  But she feel like he  _gets_ her, in a way that most people don’t.  When she has a problem, he’s the one she wants to talk to, and when something good happens he’s the first person she tells.

Darcy is still waiting for everything to get settled on the New York end of things when she gets the message.  Hawkguy might be traveling to her area for business soon, and he wants to know if she’d like to get a cup of coffee or something.

Darcy freaks out for a day, and then tells him yes.

She spends way too much money on a new dress that she’s too self conscious to wear.  When she shows up half an hour early at the cafe, she’s in her favorite jeans and a button up shirt that belonged to her first boyfriend.  It’s not her sexiest outfit, but it is her most comforting one.  

It takes all her concentration not to pick the polish off of her nails while she waits, looking up every time the door opens.  Which is ridiculous because she has no idea what Hawkguy looks like.  Everyone in the cafe thinks she’s a weirdo.

While she’s getting her 3rd refill, someone sits down at her table.  Darcy turns around with a full mug of coffee, and sees exactly what she was hoping for.

He is older than her, but not in a way that matters.  His clothes are relaxed without being too young-- leather Chuck Taylors that look like they’ve had a long life, black pants, and a blue sweater that brings out his eyes.  Pretty eyes. He has a boxer’s nose, but Darcy likes it.  He looks dependable.

 _Oh god, please be him._ She prays.  She smiles cautiously.  He smiles back and Darcy can actually hear her heart beating in her ears.

“Hi.”  She says, raising the hand not holding her coffee at him awkwardly.  She was going for more of a wave, but he reaches out to shake it.  His hand is warm and calloused, like he works with them a lot.

Before she can stop herself, she’d picturing what it would be like to have them on her.

“Hey Darcy.  It’s great to finally get to see you in person.  I’m Clint by the way.  I realized on the way here that I’d never given you my real name.  I’m used to… Well.  In my work we go by call signs a lot, so I’m used to people calling me something ridiculous.”  He makes a face at his own expense, and there it is-- humor and vulnerability.  Clint is so real, he makes her feel connected in a way that she usually doesn’t.

The conversation is easy.  Clint is some kind of military contractor-- he seems to want to skirt the subject-- which explains the travel.  Darcy is relieved to find that Natasha is way closer to being his Facebook ‘it’s complicated’ than his wife.

“We work together very closely, and doing what we do… deep trust is very necessary.  I love her, and I’d die for Nat.  But we’re not dating, and we haven’t been for years.”  Clint shrugs, like what he’s said isn’t amazing.  Darcy doesn’t have a single ex that she’d even like to run into on the street, let alone be around every day.  The fact that Nat still wants to be close to Clint is the best recommendation for dating a man Darcy has ever heard.

They close the cafe, and then loiter outside.  Darcy has opened and then closed her mouth on a dozen different things before Clint offers to walk her home.

They’ve each had a lot of coffee already so Darcy has no idea what excuse to use to invite him in.  The only alcohol she has in the house is cooking wine.  When they stop at her door, Darcy sees him glance at her mouth.

 _Fuck it._ She thinks, and takes a chance, burying her hands in the fabric of his sweater to pull him into a kiss.  It must be cashmere or something because it’s insanely soft, like his mouth.

Until he gets over his moment of shock and starts really kissing her back.   Clint kisses  _rough_ , pinning her against the door with his body and biting her lower lip.  He holds her head still with both hands while he does it.

When he moves down to her neck Darcy can feel her fingertips tingling.  She’s breathing that fast, almost hyperventilating.  It’s too intense and she’s a little freaked out and a lot turned on.  With her hands still fisted in his sweater Darcy can feel the muscles of his abdomen shift as his mouth works at her throat.  He doesn’t seem to have any body fat, just muscle.  She can already tell that they would be really good in bed together, and she’s shaking.

Clint stops kissing her.

“I’m freaking you out.”  He says, pulling down the left side of his mouth in a self-deprecating way.

“In, like, the I can’t handle how hot this guy is kind of way.  But yeah.”  Darcy admits, because this is  _Hawkguy,_ he knows her, and it would be stupid to pretend when she’s trembling like a wet dog.

“Sorry,” he says, kissing the side of her neck like that’s part of the apology.  It’s one of those affectionate intimacies, quick and chaste, like they’ve already been together for a while.  “I know, I’m kind of jumping the gun here.  We… I should have waited until New York, I just couldn’t.”

“How do you know about New York?”  Darcy asks slowly, because they only people who know about New York are her parents and some of the Avengers. Clint’s looking at her steadily, like he’s cataloging every expression her face goes through as she works it out.

Darcy raises her eyebrows at him.  “Hawk...guy?  Seriously?”

Clint shrugs.  "The bad news is, you're dating an asshole."

The good news is obvious. 


	11. Stripper AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If working in a strip club has taught Darcy anything, it’s that any plural noun can mean ‘boobs’. So when the manager approaches her backstage to tell her that there are a couple of guys who want to see more of her equations, she makes some assumptions.

Taking Bruce to the strip club is not really going the way that Tony planned.  He’d thought, worst case scenario, that Banner would spend the night looking uncomfortable, best case scenario he’d finally get to see the guy relax for once in his life.  

Well, Bruce is always relaxed.  He is so zen he might as well be in a coma.  And really, that didn’t seem actually relaxed.  Bruce never lets go.  Sure, it was good for the guy to try not to get angry, but he also seemed like he tried not to have fun.

So, Tony took him to what he considered to be the happiest place on earth.  

FROST was what all other gentleman’s clubs aspired to be.  Every girl in the room was smart, sweet, drop dead fucking gorgeous, and talented.  They get paid more an hour than Tony’s lawyers.

And Tony has good lawyers.

After several attempts to weasle out of it, Bruce had finally let Tony have his way.  He lets Tony pay the outrageous cover, and buy him overpriced drinks.  He took the money that Tony gave him to tip the girls with.  And then, he watches everything with a vaguely amused expression on his face.  He won’t accept a lap dance-- just politely hands the girls some money while smiling and making eye contact.  For god’s sake, the man wasn’t even _looking_.

When a particularly curvy brunette got on stage doing a whole ‘hot for teacher’ number, complete with a chalk board, Tony had a brief moment of hope.  Because Bruce was actually interested-- leaning forward and watching… the equations she was writing on the chalkboard.

Tony put his face in his hands.  “Bruce… you are checking her math right now, aren’t you.  One of the most attractive women either of us have ever seen is naked, wearing sexy librarian glasses on a desk.  And you are checking her math.  Aren’t you.”

Bruce shook his head at Tony.  “I’m not checking her math, the math is fine.  Tony, _look at the equations_.”

As soon as he did, Tony could see why Bruce had gotten excited.

“What the _fuck_.”  He says with feeling, then waves his hand to get the manager’s attention.

 

If working in a strip club has taught Darcy anything, it’s that any plural noun can mean ‘boobs’.  So when the manager approaches her backstage to tell her that there are a couple of guys who want to see more of her equations, she makes some assumptions.  And it’s her break.

But Candy tells her that rumpled one without the douche facial hair was tipping well, so she goes out to meet them.  When she walks up to them the one with the grey hair immediately hands her a fifty, and smiles into her eyes instead of into her boobs.  

So already, he’s doing well.  He also shakes her hand firmly when he introduces himself.

Facial hair guy, however, starts very badly.

“So, Betty Boop, whose work were you mooching on that chalkboard?”  Tony says it like he thinks he’s being funny, a little smirk on his face that instantly pisses Darcy off.  It’s not fair, but he is now the representative of every condescending asshole Darcy has met in her entire life who thought that her brains were located in her tits.

“Fuck you for assuming those aren’t mine, Heeza Rat.”  She replies, and his eyebrows go up marginally.  Darcy hopes that this isn’t the start of some intellectual dick measuring contest, until he reaches into his pocket and hands her a fifty.

If they’re gonna tip her by the smart assed remark, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

“They’re my girlfriend’s.”  Darcy admits, shrugging.  She likes to bring whatever Jane is working on with her for her classroom number to remind herself why she’s here.  

Ph.D. programs are expensive even without the specialized equipment Jane needs for her work.  When you add in the cost of electricity to keep her machines running day and night processing the data…

Well, they had needed some supplemental income if they didn’t want to be paying off student loans until they were both dead.

Tony hands her another Ulysses, and Darcy starts to feel like the informant on an episode of Law & Order.

“And who is your girlfriend.”  He asks, with a noticeable lack of the eyebrow wagging she expects.  Most straight men who hear the word ‘girlfriend’ assume that her life is a porno movie with a title like “Non Stop Lesbian Action 4”.  In her experience having a girlfriend is a lot like having a boyfriend, only with a slightly cleaner bathroom and different kinds of bad movies.  Which is to say there’s way less sexy stuff, and way more eating Chinese takeout than other people imagine.

“Jane Foster.”  Darcy says, and holds out her hand.

The two men look at each other blankly, and then shrug.  “I’ve never heard of her.”   Bruce admits.  He puts three bills on Darcy’s palm.  “Where does she work?”

Darcy snorts.  “Well, unless you’re counting our basement, nowhere.”

Bruce just blinks, but Tony is having none of it.   He actually looks pissed. “That’s not possible.  You’d need equipment.  You’d need _funding_.”

Darcy held up the hand that now contained his $250.  “Yes, and Jane thanks you for your contribution.”

“You… you’re stripping for _science_?”  Tony’s tone of voice isn’t disbelieving or mocking.  

It’s reverent.

“This is the best thing that has ever happened to me in a strip club.  I think I need someone to pinch me.”  He murmurs, then hands Darcy a hundred dollars.

She pinches him.

“It seems… incredible that you could do that.  Wouldn’t it be easier to apply for a grant?”  Bruce says, and then he winces.

“I see that you have applied for grants.”  Darcy observes.  “Trust me, this is easier.”

After that they want to meet Jane, and don’t understand why they can’t do so right now.  “So, I don’t know what _you_ think I’m doing,”  Darcy gestures to her maid outfit, “But _I_ think that I’m working right now.  I’m not missing out on a whole night.  Also, I don’t want you to know where I live.”

“What if we paid you for the time?”  Bruce offeres.  Darcy shakes her head.

“You couldn’t afford me, sweetheart.”  She condescends.  Tony laughs.

“Oh, I can afford you.”  He promises, and it’s really the smug look on his face that makes Darcy demand $20,000.

“You do not make $20,000 a night.  I mean, all of this,”  He gestures vaguely in Darcy’s direction, “Is very impressive, but no.  That does not happen.”

“It did once.”  Darcy says, looking starry eyed.  That night with Natasha had been magic.

He’s almost ready to commit, but when she gives him the address he balks.

“I’m not giving you $20,000 to take a cab to Queens.  You should be paying ME to go to Queens.”  Every time Tony says the word Queens he makes this face like the inside of his mouth tastes bad.  

“If you give me the twenty we can take a limo to Queens.”  Darcy offers.

 

In the limo Darcy starts to question her decision, because this is her house.  If it was just Tony, there’s no way she would have agreed to it, but it’s hard to imagine Bruce doing anything too sketchy.  Tony seems to be waiting for something to happen so he can demand a refund.  

When Darcy unlocks the door to the basement and they find Jane chewing on a marker in front of her whiteboard, he lets out a long breath.

“It’s like finding out Santa is real.”  He whispers to Bruce.


	12. Clothes Sharing Crossover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So,” Darcy drew the word out as long as possible. “You wanna tell us whose clothes you’re wearing right now?”
> 
> MJ stiffened, and then looked down at her chai in outrage. “Is this a bribe? Is this a guilt date? Have I been sitting over here, enjoying your ‘sorry I cheated on you guys with that guy you hate’ guilt chai?”

Darcy resented her coffee.  

It was an unfamiliar sensation.  Coffee inspired a lot of emotions in Darcy, usually relief and joy.

But this coffee, she resented.

“How’s your coffee?” MJ asked, sliding into the booth beside Darcy.   _She_ was enjoying her chai.

 _Ignorance must be bliss._  Darcy thought, and glared at Peter over the rim of the stupid coffee that he’d bought for her.  He thought if he got something warm and chocolatey into her, she was going to forget about the whole thing.

Peter was an idiot.

Darcy watched him licking chocolate syrup off the spoon of his milkshake.  The condensation on the outside of the glass was running into the sleeve of the sweatshit he was wearing.  It was all very normal.

“So,” Darcy drew the word out as long as possible.  “You wanna tell us whose clothes you’re wearing right now?”

MJ stiffened, and then looked down at her chai in outrage.  “Is this a _bribe_?  Is this a guilt date?  Have I been sitting over here, enjoying your ‘sorry I cheated on you guys with that guy you hate’ _guilt chai_?”

Peter dropped his spoon.

“Ah.  What?  No, these are my clothes.  I mean, I wear these clothes sometimes.  You haven’t seen them before?”  He was getting his ‘oh god why am I still talking’ face.  Darcy refused to feel bad for him.

No matter how adorable he was, he was not getting out of this.

MJ had her arms crossed over her chest and was slowly turning red.  She had a slow burn kind of temper.  First her chest would get pink, then her neck-- by the time her face caught fire it was too late.

Peter watched the color advance on MJ’s skin with the trepidation of a man defusing a bomb.

“I am wearing clothes.  These clothes may or may not be mine.”  He admitted slowly, with both hands held up in the universal gesture of ‘don’t shoot’.  “But I am not cheating on you!  I have two beautiful girlfriends, why would I want to fuck that up?”

Darcy rolled her eyes so hard she almost hurt her ocular muscles.  “Oh my god Peter.  No one thinks you’re cheating on us _sexually_.  You've been doing hero shit with the Avengers all clandestine-like for months.  Why do you think you’re dating idiots?”

MJ’s face was getting really, really pink.  “ Oh look at me, I’m Peter Parker.  I think that my girlfriends never talk to eachother or something, so when I fall asleep on my desk at school all the time, I can just lie.  ‘Oh, I was with Darcy and Jane at the lab last night,’ ‘Oh running lines with MJ ran so late.’ ”  Even when she was being mocking, Darcy had to admire MJ’s acting because her Peter voice was spot on.  She’d even incorporated that awkward rubbing thing he did with his fingers when he was nervous.

“Wow MJ, that was really good.”  Peter said with obvious sincerity, and MJ looked a bit mollified.

“ _As we were saying_ ,”  Darcy said, sensing they were getting off track, “We knew something was going on, obviously, but I figured, you know, you’d tell us your little not-secret when you got around to it.  But this,”  She gestured to his outfit.  “This is going too far.”

Peter looked down at himself.  “What?”

Darcy gave him a pitying look.  “Peter.  I work there.  You think I don’t know whose sweat shirt that is?  I know.”

MJ made a face of outrage.  “Oh, _ew_.”  She said with feeling.  “I _hugged_ you, Peter.  Are you telling me I have _Stark_ on my hands right now?”  MJ brought her hands up to stare at them.  “They look so clean.  But that cleanliness is a lie.”

“He… look, he’s not that bad.  You work for him, Darcy."  He said, and then winced, remembering some of Darcy's tales of Tony Stark Being An Asshole.  "I mean, he’s one of the only people who understands about our relationship--”

“ _No._ ”  MJ and Darcy said at the same time, eyes wide.

“I… Um, hey guys, so we are here, in this public place where you definately can’t make a scene?”  Peter said hopefully.

Darcy shook her head, staring at him.  “Oh Peter, that’s cute, but we’re so far past that right now.  Are you best friends with my arch nemesis?  Do we need to have an intervention?"

Peter squirmed.  "Not... _best_ friends.  I mean, we hang out, and I talk to him about stuff.  Like us!  He really understands what being in a polyamorous relationship is like.  But I didn't name any names!"

"Peter.  It's Tony Stark.  He knows who we are."

MJ suddenly gasped and covered her mouth with her hands.  “Oh!  That’s what he meant!  Darcy, remember when he said that weird thing to us about the bifrost?  The **bi** frost."

That pun was the last straw.  Darcy set her coffee down and pushed it deliberately away.  "He's been trolling us this whole time.  Hasn't he."

Peter’s eyes were darting back and forth between them like he was watching an extremely vigorous tennis match.

“MJ, I think we’re going to have to institute the plan.  He's gone too far.  Spiderman clearly cannot help us.  We need Rescue.”  Darcy said.  MJ nodded, her hands still pressed against her lips.

“I thought you were going too far when you first suggested involving her.  But you’re right.”  She took Darcy’s hand.  They both looked at Peter.

He sighed.

“Fine, let’s go talk to Pepper.”


	13. Orphan AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy slipped up one day on a fieldtrip to the zoo. It had rained, and Steve didn’t have very good shoes, so Darcy had carried him over a few puddles. Then she had forgotten to put him back down.
> 
> “Why are you carrying Rogers? He’s not a baby.” Tony demanded, jumping aggressively into a puddle and splashing several bystanders.
> 
> “He’s my baby.” Darcy had replied, before realizing what she had just said.

 

Darcy woke up to Steve crawling into bed with her, pressing his hot little face into her neck.

It was completely against the rules, as she told Clint practically every morning when she found him sleeping at the foot of Natasha’s bed.  Lights out meant that you should be in your own bunk until morning.  And as the matron, Darcy should set the example.

But to be honest, she didn’t care about the children sharing beds.  It was cold most nights, even during the summer.  Another warm body could mean the difference between comfort and misery.  There was no real harm in it.

And Darcy had never been able to say no to Steve.  When his mother died and he came to the orphanage, he was just another baby for her to take care of.  One of a hundred with weak lungs that probably wouldn’t be able to handle the cold.  

So she tried to distance herself from him, but it couldn’t be done.  Everyone loved Steve.

Soon Darcy was sure that the Bible had gotten it all wrong.  Hell wasn’t hot-- Hell was every winter she’d spent holding Steve while he coughed and couldn’t get enough air into his lungs.  Hell was waking up with your pillow stained red because your baby had started coughing up blood in his sleep.  She’d lived with the idea that he was dying for so long that when he didn’t, Darcy felt like there had been a miracle.  He wasn’t healthy now-- he wasn’t even what you would call strong.  But he was alive.

So when he crawled into Darcy's bed, she didn’t have the heart to tell him off.  She wrapped her arms around him, and pressed her nose into his hair.  

He still had that smell to him, like milk, even though he was four.

She knew that it wasn’t fair, with so many children who needed her, to have favorites.  But Darcy loved Steve the best.

 

By the time morning came, Bucky had joined them.  Darcy wasn’t sure if he just got up every few hours to check on Steve, or if he had some kind of ‘Steve’ sense that tingled when he left his bed, but it never failed.  If Steve slept with Darcy, Bucky did too.

He’d never come on his own.  Darcy wondered sometimes if Bucky even liked her.  He would cuddle when he came to sleep with them, laying on Darcy’s stomach so he could be close to Steve, his good arm around her waist.  It was the only time that he let anyone really touch him.  She’d card her fingers through his hair, and he’d allow it-- but only at night.  During the day he still flinched away from her.

Sometimes Darcy just wanted to push his hair back from his face, or help him with his shoes, the way she did with all the other kids.  That wasn’t the kind of help Bucky wanted from Darcy though, so she tried to give him space.

But he broke her heart a little every time he moved away from her.

 

Coulson made sure that nothing that went on in his school was below his notice.  He had put his life into it, after all.  If Miss Foster needed more chalk this month than she had last month, Coulson wanted to know why.  When Ms. Potts took a vacation day, Coulson knew where she was going.  

He was very involved in his students’ welfare.

He wasn’t very involved with his students, however.  Most of them would not have recognized him.

Unfortunately, Bucky and Steve did.

It hadn’t been the way it had looked.  There was a light in Miss Lewis’s room, and Coulson was up early (or late, depending on your way of thinking) going through the books.  He’d just stopped by to ask her a question.  Her door was standing already ajar, so he hadn’t knocked, just opened it.

Immediately Coulson had realized he’d made a mistake.  Miss Lewis was asleep, the collar of her nightgown open.  It was… quite revealing.

Steve, one of the younger boys, had crawled into her bed during the night and left the door open.  At least, that was the assumption that Coulson had made until he noticed Bucky and his candle.  

He was sitting on the floor next to Miss Lewis’s bed with a book.  Something small and handwritten.

He wasn’t reading it, however.  Maybe he had heard some creak of the floor as Coulson approached.  Maybe he just sat there staring at the door for most of the night.  Either way, as soon as Coulson opened the door, Bucky was staring daggers at him.

He could have explained, but considering Miss Lewis’s state of dishabille, Coulson decided the more prudent course was to leave quietly.

It was the wrong choice.

Bucky was a very quiet boy.  He’d come to them a little older than most, from horrendous circumstances.  He _could_ speak, he just didn’t.  He must speak to Steve, in any case, because from that day forward any time Coulson was near Miss Lewis, one of the boys dogged him.  

The time of day didn’t seem to matter.  If Coulson had to talk to Miss Lewis first thing in the morning, Bucky would appear to stare icily at them from the classroom across the hall.  When Coulson had to ask her a question about a lesson plan over lunch, he’d find Steve sitting in her lap in his office, his little face hard.

Steve was the worst.  He looked so _disappointed_.

(Coulson would have been less uncomfortable if he hadn’t spent so much time thinking about how Miss Lewis had looked in her nightdress.  There was something about Bucky that made him think the boy _knew_.)

 

Darcy slipped up one day on a fieldtrip to the zoo.  It had rained, and Steve didn’t have very good shoes, so Darcy had carried him over a few puddles.  Then she had forgotten to put him back down.

“Why are you carrying Rogers?  He’s not a baby.”  Tony demanded, jumping aggressively into a puddle and splashing several bystanders.

“He’s _my_ baby.”  Darcy had replied, before realizing what she had just said.

Steve had looked at her with huge eyes, then wrapped his arms around her neck and squeezed.

 

That night when Steve got into bed with her, Bucky didn’t.

Darcy found it was impossible to sleep without him.  When she walked into the boy’s dormitory, Bucky was laying in his bunk staring at the ceiling.

He didn’t look at her when she sat down next to him.

“Bucky.  Are you mad at me?”  Darcy asked, pitching her voice just above a whisper.  It was late, and the rest of the boys seemed fast asleep, but she didn’t want to chance it.  

He shook his head.

“Why didn’t you come to my room with Steve tonight?”  She asked.

Bucky screwed up his face, like finding the right words took immense concentration.  “You want him.  He’s… your baby.  It’s better, without me.”  And from the little shrug he gave to his stunted left arm, she knew what he really meant.  Better without the cripple.

Darcy smoothed the hair back from his forehead, relieved that he still seemed willing to let her touch him.  “Yeah, James, Steve is my baby.  But you’re mine too.”

He turned his gaze to her face, searching for something.  “Why.”

Darcy shrugged.  “Because I love you.  Why else?”

 

Jane met the son of a Scottish nobleman, and got married in the same day.  Darcy wasn’t sure if she was appalled or impressed, until Thor came to collect Jane two weeks later.

“I have no idea how you managed it.  But wow, fantastic job.”  Darcy said, watching as he lifted a trunk the size of a full grown man into the back of his carriage with one arm.

“I know,”  Jane said, sighing.  “Now you just have to get Coulson up to snuff and we’ll both be settled.”

Darcy stared at her.  “What can you mean by that?”

Jane looked just as surprised as Darcy felt.  “He’s in love with you.  You haven’t noticed?”

Darcy shook her head.  “He barely speaks to me.”

Jane snorted.  “Well, your body guards are pretty intimidating.”

 

Coulson had known Jane Foster had gotten married, he just hadn’t realized to whom until it was too late.

At the sight of him, all of the blood drained from Thor’s face.  “Coulson?”

Coulson considered a thousand lies in the next moment before giving it up as a bad job.  “Hello Thor.”  He responded calmly.

“You’re dead.  My brother killed you.”  Thor said, with much less volume than was usual for him.  Even so, Jane and Darcy were close enough to overhear.  Coulson sighed internally.  

“Yes.  Well.  It was for the best.  Nick would have never allowed me to use my fortune the way I wanted to.  As a dying wish, however…”  He shrugged.  “Well, it would have been a scandal not to oblige me.”

“It has long troubled me, my brother’s… disreputable conduct.  You were as ever a gentleman.  I am gratified to see that you remain so.”  Thor’s grin as he grasped Coulson’s shoulders was contagious. Coulson found himself returning it.  

“Oh, no, I’m no longer a gentleman.  I hope to never be one again.”  He said, raising his voice enough to carry.

Thor’s eyes found Darcy.  “ _This_ I can understand.  But know you can forever call on me.”

 

Darcy felt Jane’s absence more than she had imagined possible.  She found herself frequently awake in the night, walking the hallways or taking the air on the balcony in the weeks to come.  And there Coulson found her, alone, for the first time in years.

 

He wasn’t sure if she was so used to the chaperonage of the children that the impropriety of the situation didn’t strike her, or if she just didn’t care.  She had always been a little irreverent.

“You know we grew up here together.”  Darcy observed.  

She had stopped being Miss Lewis in his mind a long time ago.

“I do.”  He agreed, taking a seat next to her on the bench.  She had her bare feet up on the railing, elbows on her knees.

“I don’t think I could ever leave my children to get married.”  She warned him.  Coulson raised his eyebrows, but otherwise remained impassive.  “Of course not.”

“I’m not a lady.”  Darcy looked at Coulson out of her peripheral vision.  He looked… a little amused.

“If I was looking for a lady, I wouldn’t have died.”  He replied.

They sat in silence, and didn’t kiss.  But their hands found each other.


	14. Meeting in an Elevator/5 times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five times Darcy meets her father.

  

Darcy meets her father for the first time in an elevator.

She has her headphones on, because Tony Stark’s elevator music is aggressively bad.  Most elevator music is boring, but harmless about it--  _Tony’s_  is weapons grade boring.  It is as if he spent time carefully focus grouping to find music that made being in his elevator as excruciating as possible.  The first time Darcy had to take one to the sub-basement level they had stuck Jane on, she’d started to fall asleep while leaning against the side of the elevator.  

Now she had a system.  First, a full 8 ounces of black coffee.  Second, a further 12 ounces of coffee with milk in a tumbler.  Third, her Ipod, cranked up to ‘this is going to cause hearing damage’ levels.

Darcy had also learned not to make eye contact with anyone in the elevator.  So it took a while for Darcy to realize that anyone was talking to her, or to realize that that person was Tony.

He’s staring at her Ipod, gesturing and opening and closing his mouth, so Darcy pops out an earbud.

“--shouldn’t be able to function inside the building.” He finishes.  After a moment of silence he raises his eyebrows at her, like he’s expecting some sort of response.

“I didn’t get like the first half of that dude.”  Darcy says, stating what should be the obvious.

“Damn kids and their loud music.”  Tony mutters, not actually under his breath but as if Darcy can’t hear it.  “I said,” Louder now, “How does  _that_ work on the lower levels?  Nothing that isn’t StarkTech should be able to function below the lobby.”

Darcy looks down at her Ipod, then shrugs.  “Well, I have no idea.  It always works.”

When he puts his hand out like he expects Darcy to give it to him, she does it with a certain level of resistance.  It had taken a lot of effort to get it back from Coulson after the whole Jackbooted Thugs Stealing All Jane’s Stuff incident.  She didn’t want to risk losing it again.

On the other hand, this was Tony Stark, billionaire playboy philanthropist and her current employer.  So Darcy handed the Ipod over, but she resented it.

To her, it didn’t look like he’d done anything to it, but after thumbing through something on the screen, Tony’s face went really white.

“This-- Where did you get this?” His voice sounded like it wanted to be demanding but it actually came out kind of scared shitless.  It took Darcy from a bit annoyed to starting to get freaked out in record time. Even though she’d never met Tony before, he had a reputation for being sort of boundlessly confident.  

He’d had a casual conversation with  _Loki_  and offered him a drink.  

Darcy’s Ipod should not be the sort of thing that threw him.

“My dad gave it to me.  So look, you’re making me kind of a lot nervous right now with your whole Edvard Munch face thing.”  She gestured to his face, which was, if anything, getting paler.

“You got it from your dad.  Okay.  Okay.”  Tony said, completely ignoring everything else Darcy had said.  He had her Ipod in some kind of death grip, staring with a facial expression one would expect from an actor on The Walking Dead.

Darcy had no idea where Tony was getting off, but they were pretty close to her floor, and despite the way he was acting about it, Darcy wanted her Ipod back.  It seemed best to extract it now.

“Yes.  And now, I would like to have it back.”  Darcy said, speaking slowly and putting her hands palm up in front of his face.  “Please place the offending object into my hands, and we can both leave this elevator and never speak of it again, okay?”

Tony seemed to have gone somewhere else, mentally.

The elevator opened to her floor, and they both stood there with the door open for a really long time.

“Okay.  Well, I’m gonna let you hang on to that. You can just get it back to me whenever.”  Darcy said, finally, and even though she loved that Ipod like it was the only thing her dad had ever given her (and it was), she got off the elevator.  The doors closed, leaving her standing alone in the dark corridor that led to Jane’s lab.  Where she would be working, today and for the foreseeable future, without any auditory stimulation.

“Son of a  _bitch_.” She swore, digging into her purse for her phone.  Which, hey, Tony was right, does not work.

 

The second time Darcy meets her father, it’s when Ian comes to visit.  It’s not like they’re in a long distance relationship.  Because that would imply that they had been in a relationship to begin with.  But, they’d kept in touch, so when Ian says he’ll be in town for a few days interviewing for a job, Darcy lets him stay on the couch in her suite.

They’re going for mid morning coffee together (because Darcy doesn’t really trust Ian to leave the building alone) when she sees Tony in the lobby.  He’s having a conversation with some millitary guy that seems to involve a lot of wild gesticulating.

She’s glad he’s recovered from his impersonation of a living statue, but as he still hasn’t returned her Ipod, Darcy isn’t exactly happy to see him.

This is a feeling that Tony doesn’t seem to share.

“Darcy!” He says, projecting his voice way louder than the size of the room and their relative importance to each other requires.  Even so, Darcy is prepared to pretend not to have heard him until Ian stops.

Darcy gives Ian her best approximation of the Fry meme in a real life situation.

“So, I still have your--”

“Tony.”  His friend interrupts, putting his arm in front of Tony's body like he needs to physically restrain him.

“Ipod.  Which I have, here, and am returning to you.  I lost the earbuds, but these ones are better.”  He continues, as if there has been no interruption, pressing her Ipod into her hands.  It looks relatively unscathed.

The new earbuds are purple and blue, which are her two favorite colors, and look a hell of a lot more expensive.  Darcy remembers only a few minutes before, when she had not liked this man.  It seems like a long time ago. 

“Cool.”  She says, and shows the earbuds to Ian, who mouth shrugs at her as she has trained him to.

This drew Tony’s attention to his existence, which did not seem to be a good thing.  “What is this.”  He demanded, looking at Ian with squinty eyes as if staring into a bright source of light.

Darcy checked to make sure he was definitely looking at Ian before answering.  “That is an Ian.”

“What is it doing here?”

“Ah, I’m interviewing for a position?  Not for you, sir, although obviously I’d love--er.  In town for a couple of days.  Darcy-- she said I could stay here, for a while, and no one would be bothered.  So, I hope you’re not. Erm. Bothered.”

Tony looks like he may have become the embodiment of every time Darcy’s mother told her that her face would get stuck that way.  Recognizing the signs from the last time Tony seemed to have had a total systems crash, Darcy decides to get while the getting is good.

“Ian.  Coffee.”  She says, and walks towards the door.  Ian follows immediately, because Darcy had ruled her intern with fairness and firm cruelty.

As much as Darcy digs the new headphones, which are excellent, she decides to avoid Tony from now on.  He is seriously weird.

 

The third time Darcy meets her father, it’s during the apocalypse.  Well, the attempted apocalypse.  Whoever built the whatever the hell it is that chases her and Jane out of the building is probably not going to win.  Huge robotic squirrel things do not exactly scream ‘successful super villain’ plot to Darcy.  The Avengers can handle it.

As she and Jane are not Avengers, Darcy’s plan is to get somewhere less like a battlefield and more like a mall.  If the world ends they’ll be in a mall, which movies have taught her is the best place to be.  If the world doesn’t end, well, they’ll still be at the mall, and Darcy can visit the puppies.

The sidewalk outside the tower is all rubble and screaming pedestrians.  Darcy and Jane should get lost in the shuffle, but it seems like whoever programed the robot squirrel things took the trouble of adding a priority list.  

They’re getting cornered by three of the things when Iron Man swoops down and repulsor blasts the things.  "Darcy.  Get back in the building." Tony orders in his weirdly distorted voice, and flies off. 

Darcy has no problem abandoning her puppy plan for this alternative.  She definitely likes Iron Man, although she’s still not so sure about Tony.

 

The fourth time Darcy meets her father, she’s kissing Captain America.  

She had considered hitting on the hot archer guy, but he seemed a little taken.  Like, the ostensibly single but emotionally invested in another girl type, and Darcy did not have time for that level of angst in her personal life.  She spent too much time battling the angst in Jane’s personal life.  Darcy is in the market for a little no-strings fun, and she’d found that Steve was good for it.

They weren’t dating in the modern sense of the word, with sexy sleepovers.  They were more like buddies that kissed sometimes.

It had taken Darcy three dates to be sure that they actually were dates.  The first time it could have been an accident-- Darcy’d run into Steve at one of the delis near the tower, and they’d made small talk over pastrami.  

Then later, he’d come through the living room on his way to the gym and decided to stay through the end of Sabrina.  Darcy was a blanket burrito on the couch with a pint of ice cream.  She'd offered him a spoon to be nice, only to watch in horror as he finished the entire thing without taking his eyes off of Audrey Hepburn.

The third date was him buying her apology ice cream.  When he kissed her goodnight, his tongue was still cold and he tasted like chocolate.

When Tony walks in on them, it’s date twelve, and they’re on Steve’s couch.  For once they seem to be progressing past a chaste kiss, possibly because he’d been in DC for a while and he missed her.  Or maybe it’s like in the movies, and when people almost die they feel the need to have life affirming sex.

Darcy’s sure that sex with Steve would be pretty goddamn life affirming.  The Captain is rounding second base when Tony ruins it. 

He walks in without knocking, because ‘privacy’ and ‘personal space’ are concepts that he needs to work on. “Hey, Cap, did you--” This is when he sees them, and makes a sound like a penguin drowning.

“Hi Tony.”  Steve says, completely deadpan.  “No, I’m not busy, go ahead and walk right in.  To my personal quarters.  Which I locked.  I don’t mind.” His hand is still resting under her shirt, cupping her rib cage, a hopeful sign.

Or not, because Tony seems to live to ruin her life. 

Instead of leaving, like a normal person, he just stands there.  Staring at them.  It’s not like his frozen staring -- it’s a judgemental kind of staring, and Steve is starting to get a little pink in the face.  

When he shifts her off his lap, and Darcy knows that she can pretty much just go back to her rooms right now.

She still has a pretty good night binge watching everything Catherine Cookson on Netflix.  Still, Darcy takes the time print out a picture of Tony’s face to shoot rubber bands at.

 

The fifth time Darcy meets her father, she finds out who he is.  But that’s a longer story.


	15. Seven Minutes in Heaven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy is famous in her hometown of Waverly, Iowa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure if it's needed, but I'm going to give this chapter a 'potential trigger' warning. Nothing happens, but there is the implication that some sort of sexual assault is intended by a character.

Darcy was famous in her hometown.  Not like, put it on the sign, “This is the Birthplace of John Wayne” famous-- but everyone knew who she was.

Maybe that was how all small towns were.  Everything became a story.

Most of Darcy’s stories were about boys she had dated, almost dated, or never dated at all.  About spin the bottle games, and a dress so tight it ripped. 

Going to college felt like being let out of a cage.  When people told stories about Darcy now, they were Darcy-and-Jane stories.  Sweet little anecdotes about Jane falling asleep standing up.

It was Tony who outed her.  Everyone had been drinking, playing some game with bottle caps and shot glasses that had alcohol dripping into the carpet around the coffee table.  

It was a little tame, and Tony was bored.

After a stray comment from Bruce had Tony pulling up some truly awkward highschool photos, it became a free-for-all.  There were pictures of little Clint in pink spandex on a horse, and pictures of Pepper in a prom dress that made her look like a human wedding cake.  Videos of Tony trying to do the robot while ice skating.  Even Natasha had a bad photograph in there somewhere, a time she had slipped on the street and was sitting on the sidewalk with the most annoyed lack of expression possible. 

Darcy was hoping they had forgotten about her, because she wasn’t really part of the club.  Jane was Thor’s plus one, and Darcy was Jane’s, which made her several degrees of separation from being important. 

Tony was making a photo collage of Jane’s ‘I hate having my picture taken’ grimace when he found the section of the internet devoted to Darcy.

He let out a low whistle.  “And the possible winner of our embarrassing high school photography contest may be Lewis.  I mean, I have websites dedicated to archiving my many transgressions too, but this is truly impressive, given your relative youth and inexperience.  Look at this, it is literally called ‘Darcy Lewis: Crazy Exgirlfriend’.”

Jane turns to look at Darcy, but most of the others don’t seem that concerned.  They’re loose and relaxed, and none of them really know her that well.  Darcy can think of a lot of pictures she’d rather that Earth’s Mightiest Heroes not see. 

When Tony cues up the video, she doesn’t even have to look to know which one it is.  

Seven Minutes in Heaven is the kind of video that would have gone viral, if that had been a thing when she was in high school.

Darcy had been dating the quarterback of the football team, because she was an idiot.  It was a small town, and at some point she had dated most of the football team.  And boys talked.

“I’m here with my lovely girlfriend, Darcy Lewis,” Patrick said confidently into the camera, holding it in one hand.  He looks exactly like she remembers him, clear skin and blond hair, a little diamond stud in each ear.  Used to getting everything he wanted, his shoulders relaxed.  In the video he puts his arm around her, and she smiles at him in a way that makes Darcy hate herself.

“Who, it has recently come to my attention, has fucked the entire football team.”  In the background, there is a chorus of cheering.  All the voices belong to men.

While the rest of the room is still wearing their easy smiles, Darcy sees Natasha figure out what is about to happen.  She shoots a glance at Darcy and stands.

On the tape, Darcy’s brow furrows, and she starts to pull away.  Patrick keeps her pressed against his side, still grinning into the camera.  Natasha is arguing with Tony, her voice low and sharp.  He’s whispering something back to her, looking baffled.

“That is, except my friend Ryan here,” Patrick says, swinging the camera around to show a skinny boy with brown hair who looks completely caught off guard.

“So, since it’s Ryan’s birthday, I thought we could play a little game with him called Seven Minutes In Heaven.”

The camera swings back to Darcy and Patrick, Darcy staring at him like she’s never seen him before.  The moment seems to be going on forever, and Darcy realizes that Tony’s paused the video, and everyone is looking at her.

Most of them look pretty pissed, and if it wasn’t for how that night had ended, Darcy would have felt bad for Patrick.

“No.”  Darcy says, “Finish it.  We’re just getting to the good part.”  Darcy nods her head at Tony, smiling.  Looking uncertain and guilty, he does.

On the video, Darcy stares at Patrick for another moment, before she reaches into her purse and pepper sprays him right in the face.

The room makes a collective, “Ooooooooh!” of sympathy, wincing.  Except Natasha, who smirks.

Patrick collapses to the ground, and Darcy, wearing a glittery blue mini skirt and three inch heels, kicks him in the stomach.  The camera is on its side in the dirt, positioned perfectly.

Darcy’s seen the video before, so she’s expecting what happens next, but everyone else freezes when they hear the sound of a gun cocking.

“I don’t know how many of y’all were in on this, and I really don’t want to.”  On the screen, Darcy reaches into Patrick’s pocket and pulls out a set of keys. It’s the first time anyone’s heard Darcy with a southern twang, and Jane looks startled.  “It’s gonna be hard enough looking at your shit for brains faces as things stand.  I’m gonna get in that truck, and none of y’all are gonna follow me, or I’ll shoot you, I swear to god I will.”

There are several moments of silence, then the sound of a woman’s high heeled shoes on gravel.  A truck starts and drives away, and the video clicks to black-- only to click into focus again  _inside_ the cab of the truck.

Darcy’s 14 year old brother Sam is holding the camera, while Darcy drives.  “I’m here with my fantastic sister, Darcy Lewis.  It has recently come to our attention that her boyfriend Patrick is a no good son of a bitch.”

“Ex-boyfriend.”  Darcy corrects, and turns up the radio so that Sam has to shout over it.  It’s some country song, and Clint bursts out laughing. 

“Now if there’s one thing Patrick loves more than his truck, it’s playing football.”  Sam shouts.  They seemed to be going through some kind of tunnel. “So we thought of the perfect way to express our feelings for him.”  He turns the camera to pan outside the window, to show the pristine expanse of a football field.  “Darcy, you got anything to say?”  Sam asks, panning the camera back to Darcy.  

This time, it’s Clint who gets there before everyone else.  “Oh my god.”  He says, shocked.  “I’ve heard of you.”  He stares at Darcy like he’s never seen her before. “You went to WSR?”

As if on cue, video Darcy grins at the camera.  “Sure.  Go Hawks.”  Her tone of voice makes it clear where, exactly, the Hawks should ‘go’.  Then she guns the engine.

Clint has his hands pressed against the sides of his face like he’s having some kind of breakdown.  “This is amazing.  I’m such an idiot.  How many women named Darcy Lewis can there possibly be, why didn’t I--”

Sam lets out a whoop, and for the next several minutes the video is a mess.  The camera jerks as the truck lurches in violent circles.  Darcy turns roadies on every inch of her high school’s football field to the strains of Miranda Lambert. 

The video ends with Sam and Darcy leaning against the dashboard of Patrick’s truck, laughing uncontrollably.  Her hair is tumbled, cheeks red, eyes bright.

There is a moment of silence before Clint sinks to his knees.

“Marry me.” He says, hand pressed to his chest dramatically.  "You're the woman of my dreams."

Darcy rolls her eyes.  “Natasha is the woman of your dreams.”

Natasha, still standing near Tony with that smirk on her face, gives Darcy a considering once-over. 

“We could share.”  She offers.


	16. Spies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If she has most of her S.H.I.E.L.D. money in a bank account overseas, and she sometimes Googles countries without US extradition, that’s her business. Spies probably all do that kind of thing.

When S.H.I.E.L.D. comes knocking they say that they want to tap Darcy as a ‘resource’ because of the DMV thing.

That might be one of the reasons why they pick her.  But mostly they pick her because of money.  As in, Darcy’s glaring lack of it.

Her internship with Jane was like a wild summer fling she’d had.  Impulsive, a one time thing.  Darcy’d had a crazy love affair with science and gods and the vastness of the universe, but now it was time for her to finish her degree and get a real job.

When S.H.I.E.L.D. came recruiting offering salary with an included room and board stipend, Darcy didn’t fight too hard.  She likes Jane, and the work.  If that means sending a copy of all Jane’s files on to S.H.I.E.L.D., that was the price she paid.  It seemed like they’d get it one way or another.

She doesn’t trust them, though.  Their recruiting pitch has the feel of an implicit threat, and Darcy grew up watching a lot of X-Files. S.H.I.E.L.D. seems like the kind of organization that could disappear you.

So sometimes Darcy hides pieces of Jane’s work, the ones that seem dangerous.  Like the plans that Jane had drawn up for that black hole machine thing that almost worked.  Maybe someone at S.H.I.E.L.D. could make it work, maybe not, but when she synched the servers, she took that file out.  Darcy buried it in one of her folders of baby animal pictures under the heading ‘cute platypus 3’.

That was the first file she hid, but it wasn’t the last.

Slowly, her world starts to get bigger than Jane.  S.H.I.E.L.D. starts asking for more information, things they already know.  It’s a test, to see if Darcy will do a little more spying.  And she does.

By now Darcy’s gotten pretty good at building back doors into things.  When she installs the monitoring software onto Erik’s computer, it hits her Iphone before it’s synced to S.H.I.E.L.D.  

Erik’s work is harder to figure out than Jane’s, because a lot of it is nonsense.  But a lot of it is not.  She’s careful to send on a little of both, to only pull the things that seem really dangerous.  She can’t give them _nothing_.

If they ever have someone else fact check Darcy’s spying, she’s screwed.  But Darcy is close to the bottom of the food chain, and so far it hasn’t been worth their time to look into her loyalty.  Most of the time she isn’t afraid.

If she has most of her S.H.I.E.L.D. money in a bank account overseas, and she sometimes Googles countries without US extradition, that’s her business.  Spies probably all do that kind of thing.

By the time the whole London thing happens she has progressed way past hiding files under baby animal names.  She has a rhinestone heart necklace that is a USB drive for the small, important files that she never takes off.  (The big ones are on an external hard drive inside Darcy’s Ipod.  The Ipod doesn’t work since she hollowed it out, and she spends many hours a day with her headphones on, listening to nothing.)

Darcy isn’t sure if she’s being too paranoid.  She has no frame of reference for what could happen if she gets caught.  Her imagination bounces between being tried for treason, or just getting fired and loosing all her friends.

If anyone ever needs the files, Darcy isn’t sure what will happen.  How can she tell Jane that she’s been cheating on her with the government?  She’d rather just run away to Madagascar than see the look on her face when it all comes out.

When they move to Stark Tower, on some level Darcy wants to get caught.  Just to get it over with, so she can stop hiding.  Tony’s supposed to be so tech savvy, surely he’ll notice that _something_ is wrong with Jane’s equipment.  That there are breakdowns that only Darcy can fix.  But he takes it in stride, assuming she’s some sort of idiot savant.  Not fluent in technology, but fluent in how Jane thinks.  Like Darcy is some kind of Jane whisperer.

Darcy still doesn’t trust S.H.I.E.L.D., but she trusts Thor and the Avengers as a whole.  She’s relieved when she doesn’t have to spy on them.  They are above her pay grade.

When Darcy finds out about the whole Natalie/Natasha/Black Widow thing, she is very emotionally invested.  She tucks Natasha away in her mind as the person that she might go to, if the Avengers ever really need any of those files.   She seems like someone who might take the info without making Darcy burn her life to the ground.

But for a long time, nothing happens.  Jane and Erik have scientific breakthroughs.  The Avengers punch super villains into the pavement of Manhattan.  Darcy pretends to listen to her Ipod and opens a second Swiss bank account just to be ironic.  Life goes on as usual.

Then one day the alarms are blaring, and everyone’s rushing around the lab doing important Science.  Darcy is mostly trying to stay out of the way until she hears the words ‘miniaturized black hole’.  Jane is pulling out the stupid paper files that she likes to keep just to rile up Stark and throwing them behind her.  Her hair is sticking up in clumps where she’s been pulling at handfuls of it.  

“I don’t know where it is, oh my god, I swear, I remember drawing the diagram, something wasn’t right but if we could all just look at it, maybe Bruce--”

And here it is, the moment.  When Darcy can either reveal herself, or possibly let the world end.  Darcy wants to feel relieved that it’ll all be over, and maybe she does a little but mostly she just feels scared shitless.  

She makes an excuse that nobody cares about because she’s not doing anything useful, and goes for Natasha.  She’s not the easiest person to track, but Darcy put Natasha on her radar a long time ago and can make an educated guess.

When she bangs in to the gym where Natasha is stretching against the barre, she just starts talking.  “Look, I know you don’t know me but I need to talk to you about this whole world ending thing.  They can’t find the file that they need because I have it.  And I want to give it to them, but I don’t want them to know.  You seem like you’re good at that sort of thing so I thought maybe you could help me.”

Darcy wants to keep babbling, feels a hundred more words crowding up in her throat that she chokes down.  She might be having some kind of panic attack, because having this conversation feels a lot like dying.

Natasha is straightening up and walking over to Darcy carefully, like she’s a horse and Natasha doesn’t want to spook her.  “Okay.  Why do you have these files.”

“I didn’t want S.H.I.E.L.D. to have them.”  Darcy answers immediately.  Too immediately, because Natasha’s raising her eyebrows.

“How do you know that S.H.I.E.L.D. has access to any of their files.”  Natasha says, but it’s a rhetorical question, her thinking out loud.  She looks straight into Darcy’s eyes, trying to find something.

Natasha’s opening her mouth to speak when the door starts to open, and before Darcy can react at all, they’re kissing.

Natasha’s mouth is firm and warm but all Darcy can feel is _what the fuck_.

“Woah, sorry,” Whoever was coming in sounds amused and taken aback, and then they’re gone.

Natasha imediatly stops kissing Darcy and rolls her eyes.  “Why does this always work.”  She says, and it’s rhetorical again.

“Give me the files, I’ll take care of it.”  Natasha says, holding out her palm.  She looks completely calm, like nothing has happened.  Her lipstick is still perfect.

Darcy unclasps her necklace and puts the white heart into Natasha’s hand, and Natasha walks out of the gym.

Darcy leans back against the mirrored wall to try to get her shit together, just to have a moment.  Because she’s not the Black Widow, and giving away everything she’s been doing for the last four years is terrifying.   Kissing Natasha is also terrifying.  She just needs a secound alone to wrap her mind around it all.

The door bangs open again, and of course it’s Hawkeye, giving Darcy the weirdest look.  Like he’s performing some kind of threat assessment.

 

The black hole thing works out, and the world doesn’t end.  Darcy doesn’t really know what to do now, so she’s cleaning up the remnants of Jane’s file mania when Natasha slips into the lab.  Wrapping her arms around Darcy in an affectionate embrace, she puts her mouth close to her ear.  “Since Barton saw us, your cover now includes a relationship with me.”

She clasps the heart necklace around Darcy’s neck and walks out the door.

“Okay.”  Darcy tells the empty room.


	17. Terrorist AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy’s favorite terrorist group is the Animal Liberation Front. 
> 
> Initially, this is because they have the best photograph on the FBI’s anti-terrorism website. Every other terrorist group has the same picture: some dude in a ski mark with an automatic rifle. 
> 
> In the ALF’s picture, that guy is holding a fluffy white bunny. It’s a vastly superior way to go, public relations wise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so this is not actually one of the prompts I was supposed to do. Thus why you are getting two chapters today, instead of one! Just something I had kicking around my head.

Darcy’s favorite terrorist group is the Animal Liberation Front.  

Initially, this is because they have the best photograph on the FBI’s anti-terrorism website.  Every other terrorist group has the same picture: some dude in a ski mask with an automatic rifle.  

In the ALF’s picture, that guy is holding a fluffy white bunny.  It’s a vastly superior way to go, public relations wise.

Darcy wonders how you get that job-- public relations for a terrorist organization.  Someone must be doing it, because they have a professional website.

Whoever runs PETA should take notes, because the ALF comes off as much less crazy.  They’re not demanding that you call fish ‘sea kittens’, for example.  Or suggesting that you read depressing stories about them with lines like “Jimmy the Tuna longed for death.”

One of the labs near Jane’s has monkeys that have been seriously depressing her for months.  They're too smart, and their cages are too near the windows for Darcy to be able to ignore them.  After a week they recognize Darcy, and soon they're greeting each other through the glass.  A few were in wildlife sanctuaries before being donated to science, and they know sign language.  

When Darcy sees one of them sign ‘Don’t hurt, hug’, she can’t take it anymore.

She makes the call.  Or the emails, actually.  The point is, she’s the one who lets the ALF know there’s something going on.  And maybe she leaves a side door open for them.

No one is in the building when it blows up.

She doesn’t really think of herself as a terrorist until she comes in to work and sees that the building next door kind of... isn’t there anymore.  There are barely walls left, just a black shape scarred into the ground.

Jane is standing on the sidewalk outside the lab, holding her coffee with both hands to absorb the warmth.  Neither of them have really adjusted to the temperature in New York, and it’s only fall.  Winter will kill Darcy, in spirit if not in the flesh.

“I’m kind of impressed,”  Jane comments, and Darcy cocks her head.  “It’s not easy to contain an accelerant like that.  Usually you’d see at least some damage to the other buildings.  We were lucky.”

On closer inspection, there’s a sharp line of demarcation between the blackness and their lab.  It doesn’t seem lucky.

It seems deliberate.

When Darcy opens her locker in the lab and finds a rose, she’s not really surprised.

 

The cops show up at some point, because of course they do.  Just to ask some ‘routine questions’.  No one really suspects her.  One of the canine units is all over Darcy, but it turns out he’s just interested in the cold pizza she has in her bag.

The cop behind the dog is pretty cute, but Darcy keeps the flirting under control.  Since she is now a terrorist.  And thus should not be dating cops.

If she sometimes sees Officer Barton taking his dog for a run, and stops to pet him… well, Darcy’s an animal lover, okay?

 

Jane’s lab is very unfortunately situated as far as Darcy is concerned.  Every block is like an obstacle course of emotional difficulty.  Darcy finds herself wondering which route she should take? The one that goes past the dog experimentation place, or the route with the open dumpster of dead lab rats?

She might write a few more emails.

Darcy comes home from the grocery store a week later to find two roses on her doorstep.  She puts them in water and calls Jane for a movie night that turns into an alibi night when a couple of buildings she might be familiar with explode.

Soon Darcy is seeing an awful lot of Officer Barton, and not in the sexy way.  The neighborhood is  _crawling_ with cops.  It seems that three firebombings in a ten block radius is not exactly ‘typical’.

Lucky keeps trying to rat her out, but Darcy has his number.  She is almost constantly in possession of pizza these days.

 

 

When they catch Loki, it’s not because of one of Darcy’s tips.  His own brother turns him in, which is only half the scandal.  The other half is who their father is.

‘President’s Son Suspected of Terrorism’ does make a snappy headline.

Of course Darcy had wondered about the person on the other end of that ‘contact us’ button.  Why they left her flowers.  The second batch had felt like a warning, but the first was more of a ‘thank you’.  Kind of a creepy thank you, since Darcy didn’t know how they’d known who she was, but still, a thank you.  It had been sweet.

That was not an adjective that most people associated with Loki, especially not now.  The tabloids were never kind, but now even reputable news sources have a thousand bad things to say about him.  They can't all be true.

When they first arrest Loki, Darcy expects the police to come knocking.  But they don’t.

Loki never gives up his sources or even admits he has them.  

The New York Times does a full page spread about his ‘extensive terror network’.  Darcy wonders what people will say if they ever find out that his ‘network’ is a 25 year old intern.  Probably that she’s sleeping with him.

(He is a beautiful man.  It wouldn’t be the worst rumor Darcy’s ever had.)

Loki’s trial doesn’t take place in some secret court, but in a full public hearing.  Maybe the President is going for transparency.  From what Darcy can tell, all he’s achieving is a circus.

Even without Loki naming any names, Darcy ends up in court as a material witness.  Barton’s scary boss Coulson and the equally scary prosecutor want her to talk about the lab bombing and cry.  To say it’s just like 9/11 and her sense of safety is forever destroyed or something.

Darcy’s still not sure what she plans on saying.  Since seeing the proceedings could ‘contaminate’ her as a witness, they leave her outside the court room to get bored in her least favorite outfit.  It goes on for long enough that her nerves start to dissipate.

By the time they call her into the court, Darcy’s waited long enough to be happy about it.  A little lying under oath could be just the thing to liven up her morning.

The atmosphere in the courtroom is strange.  It feels like the air is actually heavier.  

Every face Darcy sees has some kind of strong emotion on it, and it makes her want to avoid eye contact.  Darcy puts her hand on the Bible and swears to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, while suppressing the urge to cross her fingers.

Once she’s on the stand smoothing her pencil skirt down, Darcy lets herself glance at Loki.  There had been some horrible photographs in the paper of him when he’d first been arrested, in shackles and some kind of Hannibal Lecter mask.  He doesn’t look like that now, in a tasteful suit with a fresh rose in the lapel.  There is a quiet intensity to him that she could see being unnerving-- but she doesn’t feel afraid of him.

Loki looks back at her, his face a mark of innocent curiosity.

 _Right._ She thinks, and fixes her eyes firmly on District Attorney Hill.

They move easily through the softball questions-- Where Darcy works, where the first lab Loki burned to the ground is located.  It’s fast and professional. Darcy is starting to think she might not even have to lie.  

The cross-examination is an entirely different matter.  Loki’s counsel is, if possible, even more terrifying than DA Hill.

“Miss Lewis.  What is your opinion of medical testing on animals?”  Sif asks, her voice modulated to carry around the room.  A sort of stillness settles in.  Darcy gets the feeling that she’s part of a longer conversation.

She thinks about the monkey in the window that had signed ‘no hurt, hug’, and the scars on its mobile, intelligent face.

“I think that it’s both scientifically unsound and morally repugnant.”  Darcy answers, because she can’t say  _I think it’s majorly fucked and it makes me want to vomit._   The spark her words light in the room is a physical presence.

“Why do you think it is scientifically--” Sif begins, and Hill is on her almost immediately.  “Objection, your Honor, Miss Lewis has no relevant scientific background upon which to base--”

“I don’t ask that Miss Lewis provide us with scientific evidence, merely that she provide us with her opinion.”  Sif interrupts, and from the way Hill looks at her, Darcy isn’t sure if they’re about to get into a fist fight, or about to start making out.

“Miss Lewis’s opinion has no relevance--” Hill starts, but Sif’s too fast.

“One of the primary definitions of a terrorist act is that it is intended to intimidate or coerce the civilian population.  Miss Lewis is a civilian whose life has been touched by my client’s alleged acts of alleged terrorism.  As such, her opinion of these acts, and whether they were successful in inspiring fear, is relevant.”

“Objection overruled.  You may answer the question.”  Judge Heimdall’s voice is surprisingly deep.  Hill looks like the next time she enters a courtroom it will be on a murder charge.

“I think it’s scientifically unsound because there are a lot of huge differences between the effect a medication has on an animal, vs the effect it has on a human.”  Darcy answers, waiting for Hill to start screaming that Darcy’s degree is in PoliSci and not Comparative Biology or Veterinary Medicine.  She stays quiet, though. 

“You said that you also believe animal testing to be morally repugnant.  That’s a strong statement.”

Darcy takes a deep breath, trying for calm and professionalism because she’s wearing business clothes in a court hearing, and she needs to sound reasonable.  And not like the kind of person who would help the President’s son blow up buildings.

“It’s a strong feeling.  It’s unnecessary, and it’s cruel.”

Sif pauses before her next question, making intense eye contact with the jury.  “And would you say,”  she turns back to Darcy, “that this incident, the destruction of a lab that participated in animal testing, caused you to feel fear?”

Darcy knows what her next line is supposed to be.  

But she swore to tell the truth.

“I would say that if anything, it caused me to feel the opposite.  Walking by that place every day… it was horrible.  I felt like I was witnessing this atrocity that no one else was paying any attention to, and there was nothing I could do about it.  When--whatever happened-- happened, I guess I just felt… relieved.  That someone had finally put a stop to it.”

She finally looks at Loki, hoping he can read between the lines.  That he understands that she’s saying  _I’m sorry_ and  _Thank you._

Loki’s face is so still, but now she can see something in his eyes.  The ones that  _saw_ the same things she had.  He stands up, his chair scraping loudly against the stone floor.  It's like a door slamming shut on all the sound in the room.   Everyone stops talking.  Stops moving.

Loki reaches into his lapel and pulls out the rose, bringing it slowly to his lips.  Then with a flick of his wrist so fast and graceful it catches everyone off guard, he throws it into Darcy’s lap.

The bailiff starts forward to do something, but Loki’s already sitting down.  Already quiet and bland again.

“No further questions, your Honor.”  Sif says.  The entire room is making this sound, low, like radio static.  Whispering.

Darcy picks the rose up.  She wants to press it to her lips, but she doesn’t.


	18. Mythical Creature/Human

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy is a mermaid, and Jane is a scuba diver.

The first human artifact Darcy finds is a fork.

She doesn’t know it’s a fork, or what a fork is, but she knows that it’s  _new_.  All her sisters and brothers make a huge deal about how young Darcy is.  How she doesn’t really know anything yet, blah blah blah.  Darcy feels like she’s been alive forever already.  Everything is so  _dull_.  She’s sick of seaweed and singing, and combing her hair.  

She hears it all the time, how lucky they all are to have such a wise king.  That peace is wonderful.  It probably is, but it’s also  _boring_.

The fork is never boring.  Every time Darcy looks at it she can think of something else it might be for.  It’s a necklace separator, or a foot scratcher, or possibly something for your hair.  A doll stand.  A lightning rod.

She likes to look at it so much that eventually she just bends it around her wrist like a bracelet.  That’s not what forks are for-- she’s pretty sure.

Everyone thinks she’s weird, but they’re nice about it.  Steve will sit and listen for hours while Darcy shows him around her treasure room.  He’s curious too.  Not as much as Darcy is, but sometimes she sees him looking at the statue she found with a furrow in his forehead.  

Her treasure room is a sort-of secret.  There are a lot of people who know about it, but none of them are Odin.  

Even though it’s hard, Darcy keeps her treasure room dry.  It’s dry on land, it makes sense that land things need to be dry.  Darcy has to spend a lot of time in the evenings scrubbing her fork to keep it sparkling as it is, she doesn’t want the rest of her collection turning red too.

The day Darcy meets Jane is the greatest of her life.  

Thor had been odd all day when he comes to her, desperate to use her treasure room because he needs ‘air’.  When she asks why he turns wide eyes on Odin, laughing about something across the room.

“Oh, please.”  Darcy says, dripping sarcasm.

Thor considers this seriously before nodding.  “You would be a good ally in this matter.”

Then he shows her the woman in his room.  She’s wearing some kind of mask over her face, bubbles streaming from it.  She's unconscious, but her chest is moving back and forth, breathing.

“There is ‘air’, in this.”  Thor taps his finger lightly against a metal canister attached to the woman’s back, “But it will not be enough.”

“I can take her, give her to me, my room has air, it’s dry.”  Darcy promises, grabbing the woman by the arm to drag her along in the water before she’s even finished speaking.  Thor looks concerned by her enthusiasm, but relinquishes his hold.

“I shall entrust her safety to you.”  He says, sounding doubtful.

“I know a lot of stuff about people things.”  Darcy assures him.  He doesn’t look reassured.

 

When Jane wakes up it becomes obvious that Darcy knows next to nothing about people things.

When she finds out what the fork does, it’s a bit of a disappointment.

“You just… poke food with it?”  Darcy asks again, looking at the tines doubtfully.  

“Yes.”  Jane tells her, for at least the twelfth time.  She doesn’t seem put out by it, just distracted as she moves pencil across paper.  Everything about Darcy has fascinated her.  She’d spent the first ten minutes after she’d recovered just looking at Darcy’s necklace, sketching it in a waterproof yellow book.  Then she’d asked, hesitatingly, if she could examine Darcy’s tail.

Happy to help, Darcy scooted out of the water and Jane started drawing at a feverish pace.  Her hand keeps darting out at intervals, like she’s restraining herself from touching.

Darcy had no such restraint, and has already started to work on Jane’s hair, weaving little shells and bits of ribbon into her braids.  Jane doesn't seem to mind, leaning back into the contact.

“This is so amazing.  I’ve been sure for years that there was some sort of aquatic community, I just needed  _proof.”_   She paused in her drawing to sigh.  “I don’t know if even this will be enough.”

“Enough for what?”  Darcy asks, finishing Jane’s hair and starting on the nails of her free hand.  They’re short and chipped, but with a little effort and some sand she’s sure they’ll look nice.  

Not that Jane doesn’t look nice.

“Enough for someone to believe me.  I’m kind of a crackpot...that might not translate.  Everyone thinks I’m weird?”  Jane is chewing on her pencil, adding little details with fierce concentration.  Darcy feels a sudden flash of sympathy.

“Everyone thinks I’m weird too.  You know, for all this stuff.”  Darcy’s gesture includes the entirety of her treasure room.  Jane glances up, and when their eyes meet there is perfect understanding.

“Yeah.”  Jane says, and then they’re both quiet.  Jane finishes her drawing and asks Darcy to turn over.  She does, resting her face in the water.  Jane seems to find this fascinating.

“Do you breathe air, or absorb oxygen through the water?”  Jane asks.  Darcy has no idea what oxygen is, but she gets the general jist of the question.

“Both.”  Darcy says, and then Jane wants to look at the gills behind her ears.

 

Eventually they come to the touchy subject of taking Jane home.

“It needs to be gradual,”  Jane explains, “Otherwise the change in pressure could kill me.”  She glances at Darcy’s arms.  “I’m not sure you’re strong enough.  Maybe someone else can help.  The… merman who brought me here?”

“Oh, Thor.  Yes, he’s very muscle-y.”  Darcy agrees.  She puts her hand on Jane’s shoulder, consolingly.  “I don’t think we can ask him.  He’s Odin’s favorite son, and Odin doesn’t like, you know,”  She shrugs, not sure how to explain what, exactly, his problem with humans is.  Just that there is one.

“Also, I don’t think there’s enough oxygen in my tank.  Maybe if I don’t breathe much...”  Jane’s looking at a dial on her tank, using that word Darcy doesn’t know again.

The one she used when Darcy’d had her head under the water.  “Hey.  Could I breathe for you?  Like, I can,” She tries to recall the phrase exactly. “‘Absorb oxygen through the water’, and then breathe it into your mouth.”  Darcy’s cheeks are pink at the prospect.

Jane brightens.  “It might work, but wouldn’t it be hard to swim that way?  I think, if we had some help…”

“I bet Steve would do it.  He likes looking at that.”  Darcy points to the statue.

Jane stares at it.  “Is… that’s Tony Stark.  I know him.”

Darcy grins.  “Oh, Steve will definitely do it!  I’ll go ask.”


	19. Mistletoe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy and Tony have a strange friendship.

It takes Christmas to make everyone realize that Darcy and Tony are friends.

Thor sees it from the beginning, but Jane is the first to say anything.

“Are they… flirting?”  She says it with some hesitation, because it doesn’t really  _feel_  like flirting.  A lot of the hallmarks are there-- constant needling, inside jokes, a tendency towards unnecessary physical contact.  But when Darcy throws an arm around Tony’s shoulder it seems more like a frat guy side-hugging his bros.  And Tony, while occasionally looking at Darcy’s cleavage or her legs in a pair of shorts, never glances at her mouth.

Thor looks at her with surprise. “While the Lady Darcy is indeed lovely, I do not believe that the Man of Iron seeks to court her.”

“So… what are they doing?”  Jane asked, watching Darcy painstakingly drawing Tony’s goate back in with a permanent marker.

“I believe they are as two warriors on opposing sides of the fight who respect each other’s capacity.”  Thor informs her.  The slow press of the sharpie across his face is starting to wake Tony.  Darcy, giving his mustache a last flourish, bolts from the room.

Jane isn’t prepared to agree until Tony, catching sight of himself in a mirror, looks kind of charmed instead of murderous.

 

Pepper figures it out during karaoke night.

Darcy and Rhodey are performing the world’s least enthusiastic rendition of “Ebony and Ivory” while Tony livestreams it to Youtube.

“Tony, this is racist.”  Pepper informs him, her voice flat.  “Racist, and possibly a form of workplace harassment.”

“Shh, Pepper, this is amazing, don’t ruin this for me,”  He whispers, waving a quelling hand.  On stage Darcy has the look of a woman vowing revenge.

She gets it when Tony’s turn comes up, and his hard rock ballad is replaced by Taylor Swift.

“Lewis.”  Tony hisses, squinting to see her in the audience.  She’s almost choking with laughter next to Rhodey, who is holding up his cell phone to record the event with an admirably straight face.

Still, he does a decent rendition of ‘Hey Stephen’.

 

It takes Christmas to clue the rest of the team in.  Specifically, it is Dummy following a harassed looking Tony around the tower with a sprig of mistletoe.

Everyone is in the common room because Steve insists on teambuilding activities.  Ostensibly they are decorating the Christmas tree.  In reality most of the Avengers are lounging in arm chairs while Thor and Steve decorate, watching Tony and Dummy like it’s a Thanksgiving football game.

“Seriously buddy, it’s enough, I’ve already kissed, like, everyone.”  Tony says, trying to put a coffee table between himself and the A.I.  “I kissed Pep.  I kissed Lewis.  I kissed  _Barton.”_

Clint looks up from the episode of Dog Cops he’s watching on his tablet.  “He did.  It was horrible.”  He confirms.

Dummy continues to track Tony with unwavering focus until he’s backed against the boxes of glass bulbs next to Steve and Thor.

He waves the mistletoe menacingly.

“Oh for-- you know what, fine.”  Tony grabs Thor’s face and plants one right on his lips.

This seems to satisfy Dummy momentarily, until he turns his camera on Steve.

“No, this is definitely where I draw the line, I am not going to--” Tony is cut off mid sentence by Steve giving Tony his version of the V-J Day in Times Square kiss.

“Okay Dummy, terminate program.”  Darcy calls from across the room. Rhodey glances over to find Darcy taking a photo of the kiss with her Iphone.

“Were you… wingmanning for Tony?”  He asks, eyebrows raised.

“Yes.  I am clearly excellent at it.”  Darcy looks up from her phone.  “Tony, however, is awful at it, I don’t know how you ever got laid.”

Rhodey snorts.  “What makes you think that I did?”

Darcy rolls her eyes.  “Please.  I’ve seen the Vegas pictures.  What happens on Tony’s hard drive does not stay on Tony’s hard drive.”

That has so many disturbing possibilities that Rhodey doesn't figure out who Tony is trying hook up with Darcy until New Year’s Eve.

He's the last to know.


	20. Magic Spell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy is trapped in her fantasies, and only Captain America and the Hulk can save her.

Darcy is still engrossed in her number one work fantasy when she notices the trees.

There are no trees in her work fantasies.  Trees are something she imagines when a room is particularly boring and beige; a fairy tale forest with ivy and snow and magical unicorns.  It’s not the fantasy she usually unpacks at the lab, though.  And the air smells different-- like pine needles and cold.

“...Well, that’s weird.”  Darcy says, and her voice has an echo.  There is a huge spruce growing straight out of one of Jane’s machines.  It’s one of her favorites.  There should be a Jane there, making beached whale sounds at it, but… the lab is completely deserted.

Darcy isn’t sure what she’s expecting when she reaches out to touch it.  For her hand to pass through it like one of Tony’s stupid holograms, maybe.  But it’s solid, with slick needles that leave resin on her skin.

She brings her fingers up to her nose, and she can smell it.  When she touches it to her tongue, she can taste it.

She’s pretty sure that doesn’t happen during hallucinations.

Darcy stands up, and the floor feels the same way it always did.  Her sneakers make the same sounds-- but after a few feet it dissipates into dirt.  It’s smooth and hard packed, like asphalt.  When her feet touch the dirt, there’s a ringing sound like one of those bells they leave on hotel counters.

“Are you ready to go?”

Darcy whips around, and… there’s Steve.  Or really, there’s Captain America, because he’s in uniform-- the old one she’s seen in USO show pictures.  He smiles at her, and the strap of his helmet cuts into the flesh of his neck.

“If we don’t leave soon, we’re going to miss it.”  He continues, offering his arm.

“...Miss what?” Darcy asks, looking at his arm.  It looks just as real as everything else.

“Miss the end.”  As she still hasn’t taken his arm, Steve shrugs and settles his hands into his pockets.  That seems pretty useful in a uniform, actually.  (Darcy is usually of the opinion that every piece of clothing could be improved with more or larger pockets.)

“It’s not going to last much longer.  We have to go, if we’re going to get there in time.”  There’s nothing urgent in his voice.  He seems happy waiting for her to decide what to do.

It’s distinctly  _not_ Steve.  “This isn’t real.”  Darcy says, and Steve nods.  “You’re not real.”

He smiles.  “No.  But I can help you anyway.”

He offers his arm again.  There’s so much about this environment that is obviously straight from Darcy’s psyche, and if that holds true for Steve… Well, he  _would_  help her. 

Darcy takes his arm, and he beams at her.  He tucks her hand against his body, which is solid and warm and  _real._

 _God, he even smells good._ Darcy refuses to think about the fact that, since this is apparently her fantasy of Steve, he would definitely make out with her.

“So, Steve… Do you know what’s going on?  Like, why I’m here.  Or where here is?”  Darcy follows him into the woods, each step making that ringing sound.  There seems to be a path if you look at it the right way.

He shrugs, still smiling amiably.  “I only know why I’m here.”

The deeper they walk into the forest, the quieter everything seems to get.  There are no animals, no movements other than their own.  Darcy finds herself pressing closer to Steve, who seems perfectly happy in the creepy woods.

“Okay.  Why are you here?”  Darcy asks, letting him guide her while she stares suspiciously into the darkness.  She has no idea if seeing an animal would make her feel better, or worse.

“To save you.”  He answers, helping her over a log by putting both hands on her waist and lifting her over it.

“Well,  _this_  is a part of my subconscious I did not necessarily want to confront.”  Darcy mutters.  If she has some kind of damsel complex from being around the Avengers she’s going to be pissed at herself.  She’s never been big on the whole Princess Peach thing.

Steve either doesn’t hear this or it’s not something that he has a response for.  It’s about then the Darcy hears her first sound-- the shuffle of branches off to the right of the path.  Like something huge moving through the underbrush.

“Steve, do you hear that?”  Darcy asks, lowering her voice.  It seems pointless while her every step echos, but she feels suddenly watched and wants to whisper.

“Yeah.”  Steve says, producing his shield from… well, nowhere, but Darcy’s just grateful it’s not the one from the USO.

They keep walking and the shuffle follows them, the forest close on all sides.  Darcy is trying not to freak out, wishing for a taser or pepper spray or  _something_ in her pockets other than lip gloss and her iPod.  She has a pretty good idea what’s following them.

When the trees thin, Darcy’s not surprised to see the Hulk.

Steve doesn’t hesitate to throw himself into the fight, working his crazy gymnast moves, and Hulk doesn’t hesitate to smash him into the ground until there’s a dent with Steve inside it.  Steve doesn’t seem to be injured at least-- there’s no blood.  But he’s laying there still and stunned when the Hulk turns his attention on Darcy.

When he charges, she throws everything she has at him.  The lipgloss drops a few feet in front of her, but the iPod hits the Hulk in the face with a huge crack, like thunder before the sky opens up into a torrent of rain.

And then there’s no Hulk, just Bruce wearing a pair of khaki shorts.  He pushes his glasses up his nose and looks around curiously.

“Well, this is interesting.”  Bruce comments. “When Stephan said you were lost in a daydream about us, I made some different assumptions.”

Steve sits up in his dent, his forehead furrowing.  He’s wearing… flannel.  Which is definitely not one of Darcy’s fantasy outfits.

“Darcy?” Steve asks, looking concerned.  Darcy is flat on her ass in the middle of the path.  

“Um.  Hi.  Are you real Steve now?  Because that’s kind of a problem, fake Steve was the one who knew where we were going.”

Bruce has picked up Darcy’s iPod and is looking at the deep crack down its center.  “Steve, I think this is what Stephen was talking about.  Darcy’s focus.  How did you know to break it?”

“Dude, the only thing I knew was ‘Oh shit, the Hulk is coming for me and this is literally the only thing in my pocket.’  You wanna tell me what the fuck is happening here?”  Darcy lets Steve help her up.  Afterwards he drops her hands like they’re hot coals.  It convinces her more than anything else that this is the real Steve.  

She retrieves her lip gloss from the dirt, regretting not making out with him when she had the chance. 

“While the Avengers were outside of the tower, an enchantment was placed on it.”  Bruce pauses, trying to gauge how much to explain.  He seems to settle on the short version.  “We were able to penetrate the illusion, but when the spell dissipated, you were the only one we couldn’t wake.  Stephen Strange said it was because you were already entrenched in a personal fantasy when the larger illusion tried to take hold.”

Darcy shrugs.  She took explanations of magic things with the same blind faith as science things.  Everything with Thor and Jane had convinced Darcy that magic and science were

a) basically the same thing, and 

b) not something she was ever going to fully understand.

“Okay.  Let’s focus.  Darcy, you said that… ‘fake’ Steve knew where to go?  Where was he taking you?”  Steve askes, still looking for all the world like a puzzled border collie.  Complete with the furrowed brow and tilted head.

“I have no idea.  Down this path somewhere.”  Darcy answers, and Bruce joins the confused dog club.

“What path?”  He asks, looking left and right while standing smack dab in the middle of it.

“...Right.”  Darcy looks at Steve, who is equally clueless.  “Well, I guess I’m the leader now.”

 

They walk for a really long time.  Darcy tries to make small talk, but the boys seem determined not to talk to her.  Or look at her.  

At the end of the path is Jane’s lab. 

This one seems different, though, more real.  There are mugs of coffee leaving rings on the counter next to abandoned pencils.  And way fewer trees.  When Darcy’s feet hit the tiles and stop ringing, she’s expecting something to happen.  Like, a shaft of light that restores reality or something.

Nothing does.

“Ah.  So.  Stephen said that if you broke the focus, anyone involved in the fantasy would need to.  Um.  Act out their part.”  Steve says, studiously not making eye contact.  Bruce is very interested in a cup of old coffee.

Darcy smacks Steve on the back.  “Don’t worry Cap, this is a  _work_ fantasy.  When the lab gets really, really boring, sometimes I pretend that the Hulk comes in and destroys everything.”

Bruce looks up, his face stuck between horror and amusement.  “You were fantasizing about… the Hulk?”

“Well, sometimes Steve uses his shield to smash down the walls, and says ‘Darcy, it’s a matter of national security!’  Then he carries me out of the lab, and we go get frozen yogurt.”


	21. Invasion of Privacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tony. I think this comes to about half a million dollars.” Steve says slowly, trying to process the fact that a normal person-- not a billionaire, like Tony-- has the ability to owe that amount of money to anyone.
> 
> “Probably more.” Tony says absently, running his thumb over his lower lip while he thinks.

Steve starts reading Darcy’s mail over spring break.

Like most bad decisions, it begins innocently.  Steve just means to set Darcy’s mail aside for her, so it doesn’t pile up on the counter.  She seems to get a lot of mail, which Steve thinks is nice.  No one seems to write letters anymore.

The ones that are from her friends are pretty obvious-- they have envelopes decorated with little drawings.  Or they’re addressed to someone who couldn’t be anyone _but_ Darcy, like ‘Girl From the Subway Who Lent Me $20’.  And it’s hard NOT to read the postcards.  There’s always something eye catching written on them.

He doesn’t really consider that to be reading her mail, though-- Darcy usually puts the postcards up on a board in her room, or sometimes on the refrigerator.  It seems safe to assume she doesn’t mind people looking at those.

The first day she’s gone, Darcy gets one letter and two bills.  That seems normal enough, even if one of the bills is in a bright yellow envelope.  The next day, no letters, just a pink bill, with a stamp that says ‘Urgent Action Required’.

By Saturday, the letter-to-bill ratio is 2:30, half of them in some eye-catching color.  Steve’s starting to get worried.

“Hey Tony?  Is it normal for bills to look like this?”  Steve asks, holding up the stack of bills he’s rubber banded together.  There is something almost festive about the colors, like they’re decorated for Easter.

“Hmm?  How would I know.”  Tony answers unhelpfully.  It’s 10 am and he’s drinking coffee in his sweat pants with a look of absolute concentration.  

Steve sets the bundle of envelopes within Tony’s eyesight without actually handing it to him.  “It’s just, this seems like a lot of bills to get in less than a week.  And most of them say they’re time sensitive.”

Tony eyes the pile, his mug still glued to his face.  “That Lewis’s mail?”  He asks, and when Steve nods, Tony grabs the envelope on the top and rips it open.

“Tony, you can’t just-- it’s an invasion of privacy.   _And a crime_.”  Steve hisses.  Tony’s eyes scan the paper, and then he lets out a low whistle.

“Well.  That’s impressive.”  He comments, and then snatches the rest from Steve’s hands.

“ _Tony_.”  Steve protests, but with so many open bills, it’s hard not to look at them.

He’s generally appalled at how expensive everything is in this time period, but this seems like an incredible amount of money in _any_ time.  They all seems to be for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Even worse, Darcy doesn’t seem to be trying to pay them off.  Most of them have never received a single payment.

“Tony.  I think this comes to about half a million dollars.”  Steve says slowly, trying to process the fact that a normal person-- not a billionaire, like Tony-- has the ability to owe that amount of money to anyone.

“Probably more.”  Tony says absently, running his thumb over his lower lip while he thinks.

 

It becomes part of their daily routine after that.  Steve gets up, goes on his morning run, spends three hours in the gym, and then meets Tony in the kitchen to read Darcy’s mail.  

Tony’s always the one who opens it.  It makes Steve feel a little better about it, even though he knows that from a moral standpoint it doesn’t matter who opens it.  He shouldn’t be reading her mail.

“Most of these seem to be from hospitals?  Or credit card companies.”  Steve says, and Tony just gives him an enigmatic look.

The night before Darcy comes home Steve goes through the pile again, trying to get some kind of a grip on how this could have happened.

Finally he looks her up in the database. It’s an invasion of privacy.  

Much like reading her mail.

 

Darcy gets back from her trip to New Mexico looking tan and relaxed.  Not at all like someone almost $565,000 in debt because their uninsured brother needed a kidney.

Steve has plans for how to broach the subject.  He doesn’t want her to feel ambushed.

Tony obviously does not share his concerns, because as soon as Darcy walks in the door, he opens his mouth. “Hey Lewis.  I opened your mail while you were gone.  Little young to be pulling an MC Hammer, aren’t you?”

Darcy, still holding her bag, dops it by the door.  “Okay, Rupert Murdoch.” She says, picking up Tony’s coffee and taking a swig.  “They’re not valid, dude.  New Mexico has a six year limit on debt collection.”

Tony scrambles for his drink, looking outraged.  “They look pretty valid.  Do people only sue me? Because I feel like I would get sued for this.”

Darcy stiff arms Tony like a professional tackle.  “Obviously they’ve sued me.  But it’s kind of hard to garnish wages when you’re not getting paid.  Why do you think Jane didn’t make me her assistant before like, this year?”

Tony stops, and Darcy uses his distraction to down the rest of the mug in one long swallow.  “Wait.  That’s why you’ve been an intern?  ...That’s actually kind of brilliant.”

Darcy rewards him by getting a second coffee cup down from the cupboards when she goes to refill her mug.

 

Tony and Darcy talk about it later, but Steve doesn’t know that.

If he knew Pepper better, she might have told him that the charities Tony donates to change.  That there is a donation of almost half a million dollars made to a children’s hospital that week.  But they’re not close, so all Steve knows is that Tony doesn’t pay off Darcy’s bills, and Darcy doesn’t seem to mind.

Steve and Darcy only talk about it once, late at night when the rest of the house is asleep.  

“Why not your mother?”  Steve asks.  The light from the television keeps flickering, casting warm colors in blocks across her face.  

Darcy shrugs, not looking at him.  Staring straight ahead into the tv.  “Mom had assets-- the house, a good job.  Not a job with health insurance, obviously, but better than anything I could get.  Someone had to jump on the grenade.”

 

When she stretches up in the kitchen to grab something off of a high shelf, sometimes her shirt rides up and he sees the scar.  Steve finds it fascinating.

The pictures had been in her file, of course.  A nineteen year old Darcy, lifting up her hospital gown to point at the huge stapled incision, her eighteen year old brother doing the same.  Both giving the camera a thumbs up and a stupid grin, like they’ve just won something.

Steve’s pretty sure he’s in love with her.

He thinks Tony might be too.


	22. Genderbend AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy is a very metro kind of guy, which is confusing for a girl from the 1940s like Stephanie.

Stephanie thinks that Darcy is gay for a long time.  It’s a lot of things-- his tight pants, the way he loves pink and some show called ‘My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic’.  Or the fact that he says things like “Aubergine is this season’s neutral”, and posts kissy face selfies with Jay Van-Dyne on Facebook.  But mostly it’s the way that he seems to hate Hillary Pym.  It’s not an overt hated-- Darcy doesn’t say anything against her.  He just always seems like he’s watching Giant Girl and Wasp with narrowed eyes.

Stephanie assumes that it’s jealousy, until she walks in on Hillary and Jay having a fight.  They’re in the common room, Hillary holding Jay against the wall with her forearm, pressing hard into his throat.

“What-- what are you  _doing_?”  Stephanie demands, moving to intervene.  But Hillary is already moving back, apologizing, saying she didn’t mean it.  Taking Jay’s hand.

Jay gives Stephanie a look that she can’t interpret, and follows his girlfriend out of the room.

 

Stephanie finds herself pacing the common room for almost an hour, trying to process what’s just happened, trying to decide what she should do, before it occurs to her to talk to Darcy.

Because without a doubt, Darcy knew about this.  That face he makes at Hillary now has an entirely new context, and Stephanie feels ashamed of herself.

Darcy answers the door looking sleepy in a pink sweater and pajama pants covered in rainbows.  “Hey Cap, what’s up?”  He asks, rubbing his eyes.

“Hey Darcy.  Can… I come in?  I need to talk to you.”  Stephanie asks, her cheeks getting pink.  Every part of her 1940s upbringing protests against calling on a gentleman late at night in his bedroom.

Darcy raised his eyebrows, looking confused.  “Uh… Sure, Cap, come on in.  There’s not really any place to sit except the bed though.”

“That’s okay.”  Stephanie says, lifting her chin.  Darcy’s room is not exactly dirty-- more cluttered.  His DVDs are all neatly shelved, and there aren’t any dirty clothes on the floor, but every surface seems covered in books and little figurines.  

It’s all overshadowed by his wall, though.  Darcy has the largest unicorn poster that Stephanie has ever seen opposite his bed.  It’s hard not to stare at it.

“I feel like I owe you an apology.”  Stephanie begins, sitting stiffly on the edge of Darcy’s mattress.  “I could tell that you didn’t like Hillary when we added her to the team, and I assumed it was because you had a romantic interest in Jay.  I didn’t take it seriously.  I shouldn’t have made assumptions about your sexual orientation.”

Darcy’s sitting cross legged on the other side of the bed, leaning back casually against his headboard.  He looks more amused than angry, which Stephanie takes as a good sign.  “Well, it’s not an unreasonable assumption, I’m very metro.  But no, I don’t have issues with Hill because she’s stealing my man.”

“I lived in a gay neighborhood in Brooklyn,”  Stephanie says, not sure why she feels like she needs to convince herself she’s not a bigot,  “and I… there were a lot of lesbians in the military.  It’s not that I think there’s anything wrong with being gay.  But I still shouldn’t have just assumed that you aren’t straight.”

Darcy shrugs.  “I’m not.  I don’t think that any of our friends are, actually, and if any of you wanna come to Pride with me this year you totally can.  But I don’t think you really came here to discuss my sexual orientation, unless I’m totally misinterpreting that weird thing you and Antonia do around each other.”

“I-- What weird thing?”  Stephanie asks, momentarily distracted.

“You know, the look-and-look away thing.”  Darcy shrugs.  “Whatever.”

“Ah… right.”  Stephanie agrees uncertainly.  “Anyway, I just sort of… saw Hillary getting physical with Jay.  Do you know… I mean, is this typical in their relationship?”

“Yeah.  I’ve talked to him about it, but you know Jay.  No one’s gonna make up his mind for him about anything, and she’s a girl so it's not abuse, and blah blah  _sexism_.”  Darcy makes a sour face.  “I don’t think there’s much we can do right now but be supportive, you know?”

“Right.”  Stephanie agrees, even though what she really wants is to go fix this.  She feels full of energy for a fight that can’t be fought by her.

Darcy eventually breaks the silence.  “So.  I’m very awake right now, what with my feelings of anxiety and all.  You wanna watch My Little Pony with me?”

 

They end up falling asleep together in Darcy’s bed.  If Stephanie needs any confirmation of what Darcy said last night, she gets it when they come into the kitchen together looking sleep rumpled.  Antonia’s mouth drops open and works the air like a fish trying to breath for a few seconds, before she abruptly leaves the room.

 

The Jay-and-Hillary thing blows up at some point while Stephanie, Nate, and Antonia are all out of town.  Darcy and Jay won’t talk about it, and Hawkeye just looks spooked when Stephanie tries to bring it up.  

“I don’t really want to go into it, but did you know that Darcy has a taser?  Like, on his person, at all times.  Even when you are like ‘Oh, he’s wearing a bathing suit, where could he possibly have a taser’.   _He has one, Steph._ ”

 

Overall there is very little drama in the tower about it, which is a relief, because the tabloids are having a field day.  They’re all running headlines like ‘Hillary Pym: Jay’s Beard?’ next to photos of Darcy carrying a tiny and unconscious Jay out of a bar.  Or Darcy modeling one of Jay’s new uniform designs in what is obviously his bedroom.  

There are actually a lot of pictures of Darcy and Jay that seem kind of incriminating, once you’re looking for them.

Darcy is making a collage out of them in the kitchen while Jay watches from the couch, looking hungover.  (Jay had read a Good Housekeeping article about a woman who had a couch in her kitchen for her sons to sit on while they were waiting for her to cook breakfast.  Instead of finding this horrifying, Jay had found it inspiring.  So now they have a kitchen couch.)

“Oh, see, this is why we need feminism,”  Darcy complains, carefully cutting out a photo of Jay in a tuxedo, “You have ONE gay experience--”

“Five.”  Jay corrects absently, scrolling through his phone.  Darcy glares at the side of his head.

“You have five gay experiences, and suddenly, boom, you’re 100% gay.”  He continues.  “Girls get to make out with each other at parties all the time, and they get ‘Antonia Stark’s Wild Weekend’ headlines.”

Stephanie tries not to choke on her water, and wonders if Darcy is right, and if anyone she knows is actually straight.  

 

She starts trying to gather intel on who might want to go to Pride.

Falcon says she’s straight, when Stephanie asks.  When she tells Darcy this, he laughs.  “I’ll buy it after she stops looking at your ass in that Captain America uniform.”

“I… She does that?”  Stephanie asks, and Darcy pats her arm consolingly.

“Cap, everyone looks at your ass.  Just remember that with great ass comes great responsibility, and you’ll be fine.”

 

“Nate, have you ever…?”  Stephanie starts, not sure how to phrase what she wants to ask.  “I mean.  Um.  I was talking to Darcy about sexuality…” Stephanie trails off while Nate just give her that blank face.

“I’m a male ballerina.”  Nate says, like that’s an answer.  

Darcy reaches across the table to feel the muscles in Nate’s arms, nodding seriously.  “Yes.  It feels like you could definitely pick me up.”

Nate raises an eyebrow.  “Do you want me to?  Pick you up.”

Darcy takes Nate’s hands between his while looking deeply into his eyes.  “Yes.  Also do you want to go to the parade with me and Cap.”

Nate considers this, a hint of amusement in his expression.  “Okay.  But when Fury loses her shit about us outing Captain America, you’re the one who has to talk to her.”

Darcy looks like someone just bought him a limited edition Pinkie Pie.

“That’s only the dream of my life.”  He whispers.


	23. Handcuffed Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She had learned over the years that Tony was like Rome. All roads eventually lead to Tony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short one, sorry!

A full night’s sleep was a rarity for Pepper, and it was Tony’s fault.  She hadn’t always thought so.  There had been a time when a call from the board seemed like a separate issue.  But she had learned over the years that Tony was like Rome.

All roads eventually lead to Tony.

Tonight when the phone went off and she rolled groaning towards her night stand, Pepper was expecting his voice.  She liked it, the way he talked so much faster to her than to anyone else because he knew that she could keep up.  That Pepper would probably get there before him, no matter how fast he went.

“What, Tony.”  She muttered, turning the lamp on to get the first shock of waking up over with.

“You know, it’s funny you say Tony, because it could be argued (and by could I mean I totally plan to argue this) that this is all Tony’s fault.”  It was a woman, not talking quite as fast as Tony did, but with the same intent.  To overwhelm you with talk until you rolled over and showed your belly.

It takes Pepper a moment to place it, but she’s always been good with voices and face.  “...Darcy?”  She says, picturing the girl as she’d seen her in Foster’s lab.  She wasn’t quite what Tony went for, these days.  A little too sweet, even though Darcy talked tough.  

“Yeah, hi Pepper.  Look, I need someone to come get me.  Or, us, I need someone to come get us.”  She continued, and Pepper hit the gps trace button, still shielding her eyes from the light.

“I see.  Who is ‘us’, Miss Lewis.”  Pepper asked, but really, she knew.  There were only a few people who had her personal cell phone number, and Tony was still in Japan.

“Um.  James Rhodes, is what his dogtag says?  Full disclosure, I have no real clue who this guy is, but when I looked through his pockets he had this phone.  And it had your number, and I thought ‘Hey, Pepper, Pepper seems like good people’.  Also it was the only name that I knew in there, other than Tony.  And since this is Tony’s fault, you know, I didn’t really want to call him.”

The last time Pepper had heard from Rhodey, he had been in… “Darcy, are you in Istanbul?”  Pepper asked, but her phone was already beeping with the answer.

“Maybe?  Everyone is speaking a lot of not-English.”  She sounded nervous, and Pepper did some internal math.  It would be early morning.

She sighed.  “Okay, Darcy, can you tell me what street you’re on?”

“Not really.  I mean aside from the fact that it’s probably in like, sanskrit or some shit, I can’t really move.  I’m kind of handcuffed to this guy.  We’re in like an alley?”  She sounded surprisingly calm, and Pepper found herself reassesing her idea of Darcy’s softness.

“Okay.  Darcy, I’m going to have to hang up, but I’ll send someone to your approximate location.  Don’t yell, we don’t want to draw too much attention to you.  Just keep the cell phone on so we can track you.”

“Can do.”  Darcy said, and hung up.  

Pepper made the calls.


	24. Office Romance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy is Coulson's secretary, and Maria Hill likes to bring her little presents.

 

Working for Coulson was like being Adult Wednesday Addams in those Youtube videos.  Everyone she dealt with was violent and potentially deadly, but it was her job to stare them the fuck down and make sure that they respected the sanctity of the reception desk.

It takes some time and some creative problem solving, but she begins to develop a reputation.  Not a Natasha level reputation, but now people will wait patiently in the seating area.  That’s really all Darcy needs.  She’s dangerously close to achieving job satisfaction.

From the beginning Maria Hill had been different sort.  She had never tried to storm the metaphorical castle. 

When she wanted something, she was far more likely to bring a bribe.

The bribes were commensurate with the favor.  An appointment moved usually merited a cup of coffee, or an espresso brownie, for example.  She would just set her offering on the desk, and if Darcy accepted it, then Darcy would do the favor.

So the day Hill shows up with a full set of Avengers plushies, Darcy feels a sinking in her stomach.  

 _This_ is one hell of a favor.  

Hill has the limited-edition Hawkeye.  They’d only made 50 before being discontinued from ‘lack of interest’.

She feels like Boromir tempted by the One Ring.

Hill is perceptive enough to pick up on Darcy’s growing distrust.  She tries to smile reassuringly.

It is not a good look on her.

There were a lot of situations in which Darcy thought she might find Maria Hill reassuring.  Like, during a terrorist attack, or an alien invasion.  Maria Hill would be reassuring to have around then.

But there was nothing about her that screamed ‘nonthreatening’, and seeing her try for it frightened Darcy.  

“My, what sharp teeth you have, grandmother.”  Darcy said, before her brain caught up with her mouth.

“The better to eat you with, my dear.”  Hill said it completely deadpan.  There was nothing about that that should have been sexy.  

Unfortunately, it was.  At least to Darcy, whose mind was now supplying her with unnecessary information.  Like that Little Red Ridinghood had originally been a bawdy story told in bars that included a stripping scene.

 

In the end, what Hill wanted was for Darcy to move one of Fury’s appointments so she could have it.

That had not been a fun phone call.

So she was especially surprised when Hill showed up for her old appointment the next day.  There was something odd about her.

She sat down at one of the chairs Darcy kept against the wall opposite her desk.  With her legs crossed.  

And Darcy realized that Hill  _never_ did that-- that she always stood.  She had a sense memory of a smell, like licorice and oranges.  

It wasn’t what she had smelled today, when Hill had come up to check in.  She couldn’t remember any smell at all, really.  Maybe something a little sweet, like almonds.

There was a button under the lip of Darcy’s desk, and she pressed it.

 

The Skrull had been infiltrating Maria Hill’s life for two weeks, and no one had noticed until Darcy.  When they asked Darcy why she had suspected it, it was hard to explain.  It moved differently?  Hill usually stood by Darcy’s desk and talked to her?  

She didn’t want to say that Hill smelled better, that sounded creepy.

Hill showed up for her real appointment with flowers.  

They were peonies.

Darcy buried her face in the flowers first, and then gave Hill a questioning look.

“No favor.”  She said calmly.


	25. Noble/Peasant AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her entire life, Darcy was taught what she needed to be a proper lady. The lessons hadn’t stuck, but they’d taught her all the same. There were a million ways to step wrong and lose your virtue.
> 
> Once you’d lost your virtue, though-- well, no one told you what happened then. If anyone had, she would have disposed of it a long time ago.

Her entire life, Darcy was taught what she needed to be a proper lady.  The lessons hadn’t  _stuck_ , but they’d taught her all the same.  There were a million ways to step wrong and lose your virtue.

Once you’d lost your virtue, though-- well, no one told you what happened  _then._ If anyone had, she would have disposed of it a long time ago.

Perhaps being a widow was much different than being a ‘fallen woman’.  Darcy hadn't ever agreed with that phrase.  (As if a woman was able to manufacture her own ruin.  If a woman ‘fell’, she thought it would make more sense to blame the man who had pushed her.)

Darcy hadn't exactly lost her virtue.  Her marriage had been scandalous, or so people told her.  The old Archduke, marrying so soon after his wife’s death, and marrying someone so common!  To think.  The daughter of a Vidame and a scientist!  She might as well have been a governess.

It shocked no one when an older man took a much younger girl--  _he_ wasn’t to blame.  Men had their needs.  The girl…  _well_.  She must have done  _something_  to turn his head.

And Darcy had always had a lot to turn a man’s head.  She wasn’t ‘fashionably’ beautiful, but she was curvy, with fair skin and a wide smile.  There was a sensuality to her that men assumed meant that she would be available to them.

She wasn’t, and more than one man was taught the meaning of ‘no’ with the sharp point of her heels.  She had always been a little scandalous, but no one would have gone so far as to call her ‘ruined’.

But it was not ever girl who was wedded, bedded, and widowed in a week by the town's wealthiest man.  It was asking too much to expect people not to talk.

 

It had been Darcy’s good fortune to be out of town, visiting her friend (and new daughter in law, in truth, although thinking of Jane in those terms made hysterical laughter bubble up in her throat) when Odin died.  It was absurd to accuse her of murder when she had been three counties away eating dinner with one of his sons.  And the coroner cleared anyone of foul play-- he had had an apoplexy, and that was really all there was to be said.  It didn’t stop people from saying things though.  It  _had_  been very convenient.

Darcy couldn’t help but agree.   _She_  certainly found her husband’s death to be convenient-- and though she put on mourning clothes, she did not mourn him.  

She had not wanted the marriage.  She had not wanted Odin, specifically, and she had wanted to be an Archduchess even less.  Every time someone called her ‘Your Grace’ she wanted to slap them.

When she had gotten married it had felt like a cage closing in around her that shut all the air from the room.  She would get to see a lot more of Jane, that was some consolation.  But the idea of spending every night at some insipid dinner party, some ball, with  _Odin…_

And then his death.  She was glad to be shut of him, but she had no idea of the social niceties expected of a dowager Archduchess.  She would surely be shunned by society.

Then it occurred to her-- that was  _exactly_ what she wanted.  She didn’t care if she was invited to Lady Whatever’s salon.  She didn’t want to go.  In fact, if she never saw the inside of another stranger’s parlor, Darcy thought she’d be satisfied with life.  And why did she have to?  She was richer than God (or so people told her).  But what was more, she was a widow-- there was no husband to tell her how to behave.

Darcy could do whatever she wanted.

If she wanted to, she could never speak to another person again.  Darcy could run away to another country where no one had ever heard of her.

Of course, she really couldn’t, because of Jane (and to a lesser degree Thor).

Even with her dreams of spending the rest of her days barefoot on a beach in Spain so cruelly dashed, Darcy still felt she had some room to be eccentric.

Her first act was to announce, in as public a fashion as was available to her, that she was not going to go to another ball ever again.  There was nothing about them that had ever caused her pleasure.  She hated being socially obligated to let a dozen strange men drag her around a room.  She hated that she couldn’t do more than wet her lips with lemonade the entire night, because her maid had sewn her into her gown.  But most of all, she hated the talk, and the eyes on her everywhere she went.

So when Darcy had received her next batch of invitations, she sent them all back with a polite refusal.  A few intrepid or financially destitute souls had persisted, but she had thwarted them at every turn.

 

She had been so pleased with the results of her experiment, that today she was going a step further.

“What do you mean, Your Grace?” Her footman Boothby asked, as if she hadn’t been perfectly clear.

“I mean just what I said, Ian.  I am going for a walk.  Alone.”

“Er… with one of the maids as a chaperone?” He tried hopefully.  

“I’m an adult, Ian, not a child.  I do not require a chaperone.  As a dowager, I could  _be_ a chaperone, actually.” Darcy mused.  Ian looked like he might be in physical pain.

“There are cutpurses?”  Ian tried.

Darcy let out an unladylike snort.  “If they can cut my purse, they’re welcome to it.”

 

An hour later when Darcy tripped the little thief who had tried (somewhat successfully) for her purse, she thought God must be laughing.

“You were very close.”  She told him sympathetically, while standing on his chest with one foot.  “I think that you would have gotten away with it, with most ladies.”

He was rough looking, blond and skinny with cuts on his face and a bandage on his right biceps, but he still glared at her fiercely.

“Well, go on then.”  He said, his voice a little hoarse with sickness.  “Call for someone to cart me off.”

He was so matter-of-fact, as if he were ‘carted off’ on a regular basis.  As he looked about 12, that was disturbing.  Darcy gave him another look over.  Still skinny, and in addition to the bandage and the cut he had a fine collection of bruises.  Blue eyes that seemed sharply intelligent.  Clothes that had not been good when they were new and were now worn almost to transparency… and what looked like a girl’s friendship bracelet on his wrist.  It was dirty, but it looked like it had been woven in different shades of purple, and repaired several times.

“Keep it.” Dary said, removing her shoe from his chest and sitting down at her table to finish her cup of chocolate.  There were a few men on their feet, waiting to see if their assistance was needed, and she waved them down.  They sat uncertainly, glancing back.

The boy seemed to share their opinion, still sitting on the cobblestones.  “What do you mean, keep it?”  He demanded, and opened the purse.  His eyes went huge.  He closed it again as if it were full of snakes, holding it a little away from his body.

“More money than you’ve ever seen in your life, right kid?”  Darcy asked, nodded in understanding.  “I know how you feel.  I’m often surprised myself.”  She waved the waiter over for another cup, which she set on the other side of the table and filled with chocolate.

“Chocolate?”  She offered with a gesture.  The boy was staring at it, distrust warring with hunger.

He sat down suspiciously, like the chair was going to spring to life and constrain him as soon as his rear touched the cushion. He took the cup, still holding her purse in both hands.

“I don’t want charity.”  He said, but drank the chocolate anyway.

Darcy raised her eyebrows at him.  “You don’t want money when it’s a gift, but stealing is fine?”

He shrugged, his shoulders sharp through his thin shirt.  “ ‘s different.  That’s work.”

“You’re not very good at it.  Maybe you should try doing something else.”  Darcy replied.  She took a long, careful sip before adding, “And even if you don’t want my charity, someone else might.”

Before the boy could stop himself, he glanced at his purple bracelet.  He grimaced.  “Yeah.  Be lucky if I even get back with this. ‘s way too much, ‘s obviously stolen.”

Darcy tucked her hands into her pocket and pulled out a calling card.  “You can give them this, if you’re caught.”

He took it with a bored look that morphed into abject terror. “Archduchess?”

Darcy gave him a very serious look.  “If you call me ‘Your Grace’, I will slap you.  Finish your chocolate.”

He drank it in one go.  “Finished.”

He didn’t go, though.  “You’re an odd toff.  What you wanna give me so much money for?  Maybe I’mma spend it all on whiskey.”

Darcy resisted the urge to roll her eyes.  “Well, clearly I shall be destitute without it.  You’re right, instead of allowing you to purchase food and a shirt that I can’t see through, what I really need is a new set of ribbons.  I am quite sure that whatever I would have spent it on would be much more ridiculous than even the worst use you could make of it.”

He stared at her a bit longer.  “You’re an odd toff.”  He asserted again.

Darcy set her cup down.  “This has been an enjoyable visit.  Would you like to do it again?”

He seemed to have no response other than an open mouth.

“I like this cafe.  I’ll be here tomorrow.  Same time.”  Darcy wrapped smartly on the table to call the waiter over to settle the bill, drawing a coin out of an inner pocket.

She stood up briskly, and extended her hand.  “You may call me Darcy, if you like.”

He glanced between her white glove and his own dirty hand, but took it all the same.  “...Clint.”

 

Darcy had just settled into her window seat to read with a book when the sky opened into a torrent.  Outside everyone ran for cover under awnings, and Darcy felt a certain envy for them.  She remembered as a little girl running around the lawn in the rain until her dress clung to her legs, laughing.  Storms had always invigorated her.

Her book was forgotten in her lap while she thought and watched the world drown.  How long she sat there before Boothby interrupted, she didn’t know.  It took a touch on the arm to rouse her.

“Your Grace?  Er-- there are some… urchins… here to see you.”  Boothby glanced behind himself nervously.  One of the maids was hovering in the hallway looking annoyed.

“Your Grace, they’re dripping all over my-- all over your carpet!”  She hissed, giving Boothby an evil stare.  Darcy signed and followed Ian to the door.

In the foyer, Clint  _was_  leaving a rather impressive puddle, along with a small red haired girl with a firm grip on his wrist.  He did not look like he had come willingly.

“Hello Clint.”  Darcy said cheerfully.  He started to smile, then winced as the girl twisted his arm.

“Give it back.”  She demanded in faintly accented English.

“Told you, ‘s a gift.”  Clint muttered, shooting Darcy a pleading look.  She eyed the pair.  They were both shivering, hair plastered to their faces.  She thought she could actually see their ribs through their shirts.

“Boothby, build a fire-- and bring me something to dry these two off with.”  She demanded, kneeling to wrap her shawl around the boy.  Somewhere behind her Darcy could hear a maid making small, distressed noises as the water completely ruined the silk front of Darcy’s gown.

 

It had taken a while to convince the little girl to do  _anything_ , but once she was full of hot soup Natasha had fallen asleep.  She kept her death grip on Clint’s arm, and they were curled up like a pair of kittens on the duvet when Darcy’s next set of visitors arrived.  

Darcy was in her wrapper in an armchair by the fire, working with the maids to throw together something decent for them to wear when they woke up.  They were both so thin that nothing even came close to fitting.

Boothby came to the entrance of the sitting room and hovered there.

“What, Ian.”  Darcy didn’t look up from picking loose the seams of an old shirt.

“Er… there are some…”  He paused, looking distressed.  “One of them may be millitary?”  Boothby tried, obviously not sure what to say.

Darcy reached for her robe.

“Ah… Your Grace, it wouldn’t really be appropriate…”  Boothby said, but in a defeated way.  He had no real hope of stopping this.

For the second time that day, Darcy found two people dripping all over her carpet.  This time they were at least adults, although they didn’t look any more well fed than Clint and Natasha.

Upon seeing her at the top of the stairs, the smaller man’s mouth fell open.  His friend seemed to take it with a little more composure, but swallowed hard before speaking.

“Excuse us, ma’am,”  He stated, folding the brim of his hat over in his hands.  “I know it’s too late to call, but… we’re looking for some children.  Small Russian girl with red hair, older blond boy.”

Darcy nodded.  “They’re here.  Would you like to see them?”

“Ah… Yes ma’am.”  He answered, looking at the spreading damp patch around his feet.  The maids watched the men trudge up the stairs with expressions both resigned and disgusted.

Something loosened in both of them when they saw the children.  “They’ve eaten.  I believe we still have some left, if you’ve missed supper.”  Darcy offered.  The man who had been doing all the talking seemed about to refuse when he glanced at his friend.  He seemed to be trying to not shiver through sheer force of will.

“Ah… Yes ma’am, that would be welcome.”  He agreed, and Darcy nodded at Boothby.  “Ian, please warm some soup and bread.  A pot of tea, and some dry clothes for our guests.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”  Boothby bowed and left, giving the men another sceptical glance on his way out.

The smaller man started to protest almost immediately.  “I-- no, we can’t--”

His outrage was immediately consumed by a chest-wracking cough.

Darcy raised her eyebrows.  “You can’t eat something warm and dry off before you die here in my sitting room?”

His friend winced, and Darcy wondered if his friend was actually dying.  “If you insist on paying me back I’m sure you can find some way of making yourself useful.”  

“He’s a great artist.”  His friend volunteered, and even though he was still coughing, the other man had enough strength to summon up a glare.

“Fantastic.  I don’t yet have my obligatory rich person portrait of myself surrounded by all my possessions.  You can do it.”  Boothby was back with a tray of savories and soup, the tea on a cart outside the door.

“Boothby, I will be retiring.  Please see that our visitors are made comfortable in the guest rooms, they’ll be staying.”  Darcy told him, and he bowed in a sulky-but-resigned fashion.

“Ah--no, we couldn’t trespass…”  The man protested, while eyeing the food on the table like it had been a long time since he’d seen so much of it in one place.

“Certainly you can.  Portraits are laborious affairs.  Who knows how long it could take.”  Darcy told him.  “Months, years.  You can’t rush art.”

He took a long look at his friend, who was recovering by gulping some hot tea.  The color was high in his cheeks.

“Yes, Your--”

“If you call me Your Grace, I will slap you.”  Darcy told him severely, and left the room before he could reply.


	26. Superhero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy has always had a way with technology.

The first time Darcy uses her powers, she’s one year old and no one notices.

It’s before she can walk much.  She gets around a little, holding on to things-- but in a pinch, Darcy still likes to crawl.  No one is paying much attention to her, because it’s her mother’s birthday.  The house is full of adults that she doesn’t know, and she's settled in a corner with some blocks to entertain herself with.  There are so many more interesting things in the room than blocks.  

Like the power strip behind the computer desk.

No matter how many times her mama yells at her, Darcy always wants to pull out all the plugs.  It’s hard to say if she knows that it’s a bad thing to do-- her thinking is simple at this age.  She wants it, so it  _must_  be good.

One of the cords has been chewed by something-- a rat, or their dog Maggie-- and it’s frayed and dangerous.  Her hands are spit-slick from being in her mouth.  When Darcy presses them to the exposed wires, she should be electrocuted.  There should be screaming.

But nothing happens.

 

She grows up doing a lot of things that most kids can’t do.  Darcy’s mother thinks she’s good with technology, that it’s ‘in the genes’.  Whatever  _that_ means.

It’s hard to explain how she does what she does.  It’s all intuitive, like floating in water-- just a quality her body has.  It can be explained if Darcy really tries, but it’s like a math class where they ask you to ‘show your work’.  Explaining takes everything fluid and beautiful out of it.  Makes it something flat and joyless.

She know there’s something odd about it, but she never really thinks about what it might mean.  Until after the super heroes start to come out.  Suddenly there are hundreds of them, in spandex and capes with silly names.  In hoodies and masks.

Darcy doesn’t have a hero’s body-- she can’t scale a wall or fly.  But why should she?  When there are so many heroes out there, looking for the information that comes to her so easy?

So she sends the tips.  Sometimes they act on them-- sometimes they don’t.  But slowly, most begin to understand that the tips are always real.  They always come with enough proof to act, and enough information for them to understand the danger that might be there.

Perhaps they call her something.  She might have a name, among the heroes, but Darcy prefers not to know.  It’s a one-way communication.

It’s hard to articulate where she is, the first time she hears his voice.  Where are you when your mind is in one place, and your body is in another?  She feels something brush against her-- a presence, a probe.

 _Hello?_ Darcy asks, uncertain.  She meets things inside the computer sometimes, viruses and other simple beings.  Nothing with a strong intelligence-- but this presence was different.

 _Good afternoon._ It answered.  The voice was polite, male-- cultured.  With an English accent, of all things.

 _May I enquire as to why you are probing the edges of Mr. Stark’s private servers?_ It continued.

Darcy considered lying, but she’d not had much practice separating her thoughts from what was expressed in this place.  Best to stick to the truth.

 _Tony Stark is Iron Man?_ Darcy asked, the press conference coloring her thoughts, so it came out of her almost in Tony’s voice.

 _Indeed._ The voice said, with dry amusement.

 _Well then, I have some information for him._ Darcy said, and she let the knowledge flow between them.

 

Tony Stark was more than capable of gathering his own information, especially with J.A.R.V.I.S. on the case.  Still, sometimes Darcy happened upon something that seemed in his wheelhouse, and she’d pass it along.

Sometimes even when she had nothing Tony Stark might want to know, Darcy talked to J.A.R.V.I.S.  Maybe it was that no one else truely knew Darcy.  She had never thought of herself as having a secret identity, but she had never told anyone what she could do.  There was no need to tell J.A.R.V.I.S.  There was no way to lie to J.A.R.V.I.S.

Or rather, if there was a way to lie to him, Darcy found that she didn’t care to know it.

There was something about speaking like this that was so intimate.

 

She was inside some of the SHIELD files when something found her.  It was like J.A.R.V.I.S., something smart.  Something with a will.  But it was not like J.A.R.V.I.S.

This was dark, dangerous.

Darcy was able only to send out a warning, a shout, before it was on her.

 

She came to with a pounding headache and a burnt taste in her mouth.  And to someone touching her face with a cool, wet cloth.

“Tony, she needs medical attention!”  A woman’s voice insisted, close to where Darcy lay.  “We don’t know what happened to her, we don’t know how--”

“Pepper, we can’t take her to the hospital.  Hospitals want ID.  Hospitals keep records.  And I’m not really inconspicuous in the suit or out of it.  Besides… she’s one of us.”   _This_  was a voice that Darcy knew.  Tony Stark.

“She’s not an Avenger, Tony.  She’s probably still a minor!”  The hand with the cloth was resting now against the side of her face.  It felt nice.

“Pep, do you know that when… whatever happened, that every hero in the city got a message?  All of them.  Me, you, every Avenger, Spidey, Daredevil.  God knows who else, Pep, because this girl’s like an urban fucking legend.”

 _Holy shit they’re loud._ Darcy thought, irritably.  Without thinking about the wisdom of it, she opened her eyes.  The cool hand belonged to a woman with light red hair and freckles.  She looked worried, but not pinched by it.

Tony was vibrating with a sort of nervous energy.  “Hi.  I’m Tony Stark.”  He said, offering a hand.  Darcy looked at it with a combination of exhaustion and amusement.

“I know who you are.”  She said, and her voice came out raspy.  “I’d shake your hand but I don’t think I can move right now.”  Every muscle in her body felt sore.

The woman with the red hair was giving Tony an accusing stare.

Tony frowned.  “J.A.R.V.I.S.?  You did a scan.  I thought you said she didn’t need a hospital.”

“Indeed, sir.  The young lady will require fluids, rest, and nourishing food in a liquid form.  I do not detect any permanent damage-- it appears to be similar to the physical effects of electric shock.”

At the sound of his voice Darcy tried to sit up, looking around.  “J.A.R.V.I.S?”

“Hello, Cassandra.”  J.A.R.V.I.S. said, and Darcy frowned.  He had always called her Darcy.  Then she laughed.

_There are stupider code names, I guess._

“Hello again J.A.R.V.I.S.”  Darcy relaxed back against the mattress, feeling silly for trying to see an AI.

It was good to hear his voice.

“...J.A.R.V.I.S, buddy, I am feeling a little out of the loop here.”  Tony said, looking up at the ceiling.  “Have you been  _fraternizing_?”

“I was not aware that Cassandra was considered to be a hostile element, sir.  She has proven herself helpful on more than one occasion.”   J.A.R.V.I.S said stiffly.

“Obviously I don’t consider her to be hostile, or I wouldn’t have her here.  At my house.  Where I live.  She just seems a little glad to see you.”  He was obviously trying to be diplomatic, but was undercutting every word with a huge grin.

“It is a natural reaction when one's life is in danger to find relief in the presence of allies.”  J.A.R.V.I.S. was all offended British Dignity, and Tony looked positively gleeful.

“Pepper.  I think I’m embarrassing my AI  _in front of his girlfriend._ ”  He whispered to the redhead, and pressing his hand to chest.  “My little boy, all grown up.  I’m so proud.”

“While I do hold Miss Cassandra in the highest esteem, I do not believe that would be an appropriate way to characterize our relationship.”

“How  _would_  you characterize your relationship?”  Pepper asked, looking up at the ceiling with a quizzical expression.

J.A.R.V.I.S. was silent, which Tony seemed to find hilarious.

Darcy enjoyed tormenting others as much as the next person.  But right now her head was pounding like something was stabbing into her temples.  She didn’t know if she wanted a drink of water or if she needed to vomit up everything inside her stomach.

“J.A.R.V.I.S.”  She said, hoarsely.  “Did you get the files.  Do they know-- about Hydra.”  It was all she could get out before she started to hack.

Pepper filled a glass of water to her lips, and Darcy swallowed gratefully.

“I recovered it from our usual drop, yes.  We are acting on your information.”  He assured.

“ _Usual drop._ ” Tony muttered, and Pepper rolled her eyes.

“Can you tell us what happened to you?”  She asked.  Darcy grimaced at the memory.

“Zola.”  She says, with the last of her voice.


	27. Sleeping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy can fall asleep under almost any circumstances.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is very short, sorry-- the other prompts I'm working on are a little complex, and I'm not totally satisfied with them yet. So, here, have this to tide you over in the meantime.

Darcy can fall asleep under almost any circumstances.  During college the tagged photos section of her Facebook was full of pictures of her sleeping.  Darcy fell asleep at parties under space blankets, on park benches, and in restaurant booths.  (The one she was most proud of was after going to The Rocky Horror Picture Show-- she had fallen asleep at the cast party, right next to the speakers while wearing a full corset.)

Now that she lives in Stark tower, Darcy has fallen asleep in rubble, under lab equipment, and in helicopters.  She’s fallen asleep with gas masks on,  wearing bulletproof vests inside of force fields.

So when Clint puts her inside the ceiling ‘for her own protection’, Darcy takes a nap.

 

It takes them three hours to find her, and she’s still sleeping.  When Thor pulls her out of the air duct Darcy snuggles against his shoulder.

“How.”  Clint says, staring at her in disbelief.

“It’s your fault for forgetting where you left her.”  Natasha told him, tucking Darcy’s hair behind her ear.

“We have been walking around the tower, screaming her name!  Who could sleep through that?”  Clint demands, but… She’s definitely asleep.  Her breathing is slow and regular, her eyelids moving a little as she tracks something in her dream.  “How does she ever show up to work on time?  Does she have one of those alarm clocks that violently shakes your bed?”

Natasha rolls her eyes, reaches over, and rubs her thumb lightly against Darcy’s forehead just above her eyebrow.  

She opens her eyes, blinks, and then reaches her arms out to Natasha like a child asking to be picked up.

“I’m not carrying you.”  Natasha informs her.  Darcy looks up at Thor, shrugs, and falls back asleep with her head pillowed on his biceps.

“You’re a witch.”  Clint says, and Natasha smirks at him.


	28. Body Swap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Darcy spend the day in each other's bodies.

Tony is halfway into his first cup of coffee before he notices anything is wrong.

He’s never been very aware of his body.  It’s one of the things he loves about his work, that he can lose himself in it and forget.

He did used to be a lot taller, though.  And also not a woman.

Tony opens the front of his shirt and looks down, just to make sure.

“I recognize those.”  He says, and yep, he recognizes that voice as well. “J.A.R.V.I.S.?”

 

Darcy wakes up to someone poking her in the face with a mug.  

“Drink it.”  Her own voice tells her.  

This should be suspicious, but Darcy is barely sentient first thing in the morning.  It’s only half full, and kind of lukewarm-- but it also magically came to her bed, so she’s willing to lower her expectations.

“I thought I had an unhealthy dependence on caffeine, but Jesus Christ Lewis.”  Her voice complains, “This is a minor concussion level of headache.  Like I may die if I lose consciousness.”

“Why am I talking?  This is a sleeping time.”  Darcy mutters, cuddling the coffee cup to her face.

“No, this is a ‘getting your ass to the lab’ time.”  Her voice disagrees, accompanied with someone flicking her in the ear.  “This is a ‘getting the hell out of Tony Stark’s bed’ time.”

The words ‘Tony Stark’s bed’ took some time to register.

She opened her eyes to see herself, crouched next to the bed in last night’s sushi pajamas.  Darcy had been too lazy to wash off her eye makeup last night, and so was sporting some impressive raccoon eyes.  Which didn’t seem like something an alien doppelganger would bother to replicate.

That was the first thing she noticed.  The second was that she could see this other Darcy because _her chest was fucking glowing_.

“Huh.”  Darcy says, and immediately looks down the front of her pants to confirm.

 

The first thing that had become apparent in the lab was that Darcy and Tony had massively different pain tolerance levels.

Tony had jabbed a shunt into his arm as casually as a career heroin addict, and then immediately started bitching about it.  “Lewis, what the fuck is wrong with your body!  This is the smallest medical grade needle that exists, and it feels like someone just severed my arm below the elbow.”

Darcy rolled her eyes, until he stabbed her in the arm as well.  “What the f-- actually, that doesn’t even hurt.  Do you have nerve damage?”  She demanded.

Tony shrugged, impatiently pushing his long hair back from his face while he smeared some of their blood on slides.  “Probably a lot.”

“Do you have it in your mouth?  Because, like,”  She lifted her coffee mug, “Normally I don’t take it black because it’s too bitter, but I can barely taste this.”

Tony didn’t really seem to be listening to her, biting his lip while he stared down into a microscope.  Darcy poked him.

“Mmm?  Yeah, palladium poisoning causes hypogeusia, I’m working on it.”  He pushed his hair back again.

Darcy leaned over him to pull a hair tie from the pocket of the pajama shirt she’d worn last night.  It was a very strange sensation, touching what should be her own body with someone else’s hands.  

Seeing it was different.  There was still a Tony-ness about the way he moved, his facial expressions. Like Darcy’s body was an outfit he was wearing.  

Looping the elastic around her wrist, Darcy started to pull Tony’s hair back into a braid.

He gives her a side-eye, vaguely suspicious, but allows it.

 

Eventually Darcy leaves him to do the science, because J.A.R.V.I.S. is about a million times better at being a lab assistant.  Also she leaves because she really needs to go lie down.

Tony’s body is incredibly broken.  Just breathing is slightly uncomfortable, and any movement that stretches the muscles around the arc reactor pulls.  It’s not exactly ‘painful’, but it’s something she’s constantly aware of.  

Maybe it’s like getting glasses, and after the first day you don’t see the frames any more.  Maybe Tony doesn’t feel like he has something heavy and hard pressing against his heart all the time.

Darcy is very aware of it, and she feels on the edge of a freakout.  She doesn’t even know what room she should be going to right now.

In the end, she picks her bedroom, because it’s familiar and safe.

An hour of some of that weird Tibetan singing bowl music and slow stretching makes her feel a little better.  Or at least a little less like she’s going to hyperventilate.  

She’s flowing into up dog when Tony walks into her room without knocking, holding a cotton ball to the bend of his elbow.

“You bleed like a stuck--”  He pauses.  “Are you doing yoga?”

“Yeah, I was starting to freak out.”  Darcy says, exhaling into plank.  “Very edge-of-a-panic-attack.  I could actually use a few more minutes if it’s not pressing.”

“Ah-- okay.”  He says, looking at her oddly.  Darcy raises an eyebrow at him.

“What?”  She asks, lowering herself to the ground.

Tony shrugs.  “I don’t know.  You don’t see like the type.”

“What type is that?”  Darcy rolls over to sit cross legged on her mat.  Tony obviously wants to talk, and it’s kind of killing her zen breathing thing.

“The panic attack type, I guess.”  Maybe Tony, in Tony’s body, is better at hiding his feelings.  Tony in Darcy’s body looks sad, and strangely vulnerable.

“Everyone is the panic attack type.”  Darcy tells him, pretending to stretch her arms because this much eye contact is starting to get uncomfortable under the circumstances.  “So anyway, what did you need?”

“Um-- Right.  I think I have something that might reverse the whole,” he gestures down at her body, “But I need you for it.”

 

It turns out to be a really foul tasting drink with the consistency of motor oil and a strangely metallic shine.  Tony is barely able to swallow it without vomiting.

It does absolutely nothing.

 

The rest of the day is taken up by blood tests, seemingly unnecessary physical measurements, and trying to get the horrible taste out of her mouth.

 

Darcy is woken up in the middle of the night by someone flicking her ear. “Lewis.  You are in my bed.  Get out of my bed.  This bed is meant to cradle the delicate body of a multi-billionaire, not--”

“Mrmph.”  Darcy mutters, throwing a pillow at whoever it is.

“Fine, whatever, scoot over, how are you taking up this much room?”  it complains, and she feels the blankets shift as someone else crawls into the bed.

When Darcy rolls over to put her arms around him, she registers her body.  The way she can take a full breath again, the weight of her hair.

Tony doesn’t seem to know what to do.  His shoulders are incredibly tight, but he lets her hug his waist.  When she tucks her face into Tony’s neck to sleep, Darcy can smell her lotion on his skin.

“Le-- Darcy, are you awake right now?”  He asks.

“Kind of.”  She says, her lips against his throat.

Tony lets out a breath, and some of the tension in his body goes with it.

“Okay.”  He says, and Darcy doesn’t open her eyes.  Just tilts her head up to kiss him.

 

Pepper has walked in on Tony doing a lot of things weird things in her life-- before, during, and after dating him.  The bar of what surprises her has been raised high.

She is kind of surprised by this, though.

“Are you doing yoga?”  Pepper asks, her heels making sharp clicks on the floor.  Tony glances at the bed before looking at her reproachfully.

There is a pile of curly brown hair that seems to be Foster’s intern under the covers.

“...Is that Darcy?”  Pepper says it in a normal speaking voice, and the girl rolls over making complaining noises.  Tony makes a pained face at Pepper and gets up off the floor.  He pads to the door barefoot, gesturing at her, and Pepper follows him into the hallway.

“Tony, did you sleep with Darcy?  Because you do realize that one of her best friends is _the god of thunder_ \--”

“No.  Well sort of.  Details.  Have you tried this yoga thing, because--”

 


	29. Stuck Someplace Together in Winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy is 'enjoying' the hospitality of a SHIELD safe house when it becomes a not-so-safe house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As requested, Jake Jensen/Darcy Lewis. I actually made this one a little racy, which I feel awkward about. It just happened.

 Darcy was as into the whole ‘not dying a violent death’ thing as anyone.  That didn’t mean that she wanted her cause of death to be boredom instead.

If she’d know that safe house meant ‘would you like to live in a one room apartment with no wifi in the arctic circle’, she might have stuck it out back home.  

Sure, there had been death threats, but there had also been Netflix.

Jane would probably make some comment about it being good for her academic development or something.  But after being forced by crushing boredom to read the entire Jane Austen ouvra, Darcy now has zero tolerance for what anyone named Jane has to say.

She wonders if all the books in the house have accumulated over time, or if someone bought them for this place.  Probably a little of both.  Whoever did the shopping seems to have focused on ‘the classics’, which Darcy would have enjoyed more if she hadn’t been force fed them in college literature classes.  The trashy crime novels turn out to be the most entertaining, because some of the previous residents have left criticisms in the margins.  These are initially only comments on the lack of realism.  Which soon devolve into the old-school version of a Facebook fight, complete with threats of violence.

Given the kind of people who have stayed in this place, they may be credible ones.

There is a TV, with an honest-to-god VHS player attached.  Darcy’s still trying to decide how she feels about that.  On the one hand, it’s pleasantly reminiscent of her childhood.  On the other, watching Tony’s TVs in the tower has given the term HD new meaning, and she’s not sure she can go back.

 

Every week food magically appears in the kitchen.  Darcy finds it unsettling at first, and then just accepts it.  They must be stocking her fridge either while she’s sleeping, or while she’s showering.  She thinks about who might be doing it, obviously-- it’s a small apartment that she never leaves.  And she hasn't seen another person in months.

So when Darcy walks into the kitchen and finds a shirtless blond man sitting at the table with a laptop,  she assumes that’s what he’s doing there.

Until he sees her move out of the corner of his eyes and she has a gun pointed at her head, that is.

“Hey, woah, it’s okay-- I’m an American.”  Darcy says, putting her hands up.  He’s got a huge bald eagle chest piece, and it seems like the thing to say.

“Who the fuck are you.”  He says, his voice almost… bored.  Or maybe just exhausted.

“Darcy Lewis, current resident of this not-so-safe house.”  She answers immediately.  Because if he doesn’t know that already, he isn’t here to kill her.

He gives her a look over, in yoga pants and a hoodie, and sees whatever he needs to to lower the gun.

“Well.  This is bad.”  He comments, and gestures with the gun at the second chair.  Darcy sits.

With the gun still in one hand, but angled toward the ground, he starts doing something on his laptop.  He can type incredibly fast for a man using one hand.

“Darcy Lewis-- Culver University?”  He says it like a question, but doesn’t seem to expect an answer.  The fact that he’s looking her up seems to imply that if she’s not a threat he probably isn’t planning on shooting her, so Darcy takes a moment to look him over.

He’s like a really cut computer nerd.  Glasses, goatee, sort of spiky blond hair, and an open hawaiian shirt that may or may not be ironic.

Finally he leans back against the chair, sighs, and sticks the gun in the front of his pants.

“Well, the good news is, I’m not going to kill you.  The bad news is, you’ve seen me and I’m supposed to be dead.  Can't let you go.”

Darcy squints at him.  “So, to clarify, you’re taking me hostage?”

He shrugs, and she is definitely not looking at his pecs.  They’re not Thor good, but that’s an unrealistic bar of hotness to hold anyone to. “Hostage is such a strong word…”

 

He gives her a first name, and almost nothing else, but he kind of reminds her of Clint.  Serious when business needs to get done, and ridiculous the rest of the time.  

“This shitty pseudo science is really killing my suspension of disbelief.”  Jake comments a few hours later while they’re watching Battlefield Earth.  He’s probably still got the gun on him, but Darcy has lived with Natasha.  People with the ability to kill her are sort of an everyday occurrence.

“Dude, the aliens are white guys with dread on stilts.  You can accept their ridiculous body proportions, but the ‘radionuclide particles’, that’s too much for you.”  They’re both lying on their stomachs on the futon/bed/only real piece of furniture in the living room/bedroom.  It feels a little like being in college, when you’d invite a guy over to ‘watch a movie’ and spend like 5 hours talking about nothing until one of you finally got the guts to make a move.  “Don’t science at me right now dude, I science for a living and none of it makes any more sense than this.”

“What’s a nice girl who sciences for a living doing in a place like this, anyway?”  He asks, like he didn’t already look that up while he was doing his version of Googling her.  

“Once upon a time, in a magic land called New Mexico…”  She starts, and Jake shoves her.  “Well, ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.”

Jake huffs.  “You don’t trust me?  You don’t trust this face?  This ruggedly handsome face?”

Darcy rolls her eyes.  “Yes, why would I hesitate to confide in the man who has taken me ‘guestage’.”

Jake’s face lights up.  “Ooh, do we have Buffy on VHS?”

 

If the bad movie marathon didn’t scream college awkwardness, the sleeping arrangements definitely did.

Darcy had her turn in the bathroom first, and was sitting cross legged on the futon brushing out her hair when Jake entered the room.  Wearing what was absolutely a pair of Darcy’s pajama pants.

The night started with them both on opposite sides of the bed, but they were in a shitty apartment in bumfuck Canada in January.  Even wearing wool socks and flannel pajamas, Darcy usually wakes up a few times because she’s cold.

So when she doesn’t wake up until morning, Darcy is reasonably sure that some snuggling has happened.  

Jake’s already in the kitchen at his computer with a look of intense concentration.  Whatever her wifi situation is, he obviously has a connection.

She doesn’t ask him about it.

 

They start to establish a routine.  In the mornings Darcy reads, and Jake does whatever it is he does on the computer.  Then they have lunch, and watch television.

Darcy is definitely flirting with him.  Jake doesn’t seem sure what he’s doing, exactly.  It’s like the opposite of a guy too nervous to make a move.  He’ll put his arm around her when they’re watching a movie, and then when she leans into it he’ll snatch it back.

After a month of this, Darcy’s had enough.  When Jake climbs into bed that night, she rolls right next to him.  He starts to spoon her with a familiarity that definitively answers the snuggling question.

Then as usual he seems to realize what he’s doing, and starts to pull away.  Darcy pins his hands against her stomach.

“Jake, stop being so fucking weird about this.  It’s like negative twenty outside.”  Her shirt has ridden up a little, and the feeling of his hand on her skin makes her shiver.  But Jake seems to interpret this as ‘cold’, and he doesn’t pull away.

And really, this is the most college thing that has happened so far.  Nothing defined Darcy’s freshman year more than sexual frustration that she was afraid to act on.

So she shifts her hips, just to get more comfortable, and Jake’s hips move with her.  They both freeze.

She blames the VHS tapes for it taking her so long to make a move.  They put her back into this childhood space where she didn’t know what she wanted, or how to get it.

It’s been a long time since she’s been that girl.  

Darcy turns, wraps her legs around Jake’s waist, and kisses him.  And he’s pressing his hips forward into her, slipping his hands up the back of her shirt-- turned on, wanting this as much as she does.  Darcy buries her fingers in his hair and tries to hold him there.

Still, after a little while he pulls back.

“You’re my hostage, it’s coercion--”  He’s out of breath, his mouth still open when she leans in to kiss him again.

“Are you implying that you’ll shoot me if I don’t fuck you?” Darcy says, her lips still against his.

“No.”  Jake says, and he tries to draw back.  “Obviously not.”

“I know that.  God, you’re an idiot.” She says, biting his lower lip to make sure there are no hard feelings.  “This is clearly consensual as hell, stop being weird.”

 

It takes a little time, but Jake is eventually convinced.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is my last prompt for the month. Thanks for all of your great feedback everyone. It’s been a real challenge for me to do this, and I’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of positive responses. I was afraid to start posting fanfic, but it’s been a wonderful experience so far.
> 
> I plan to begin expanding some of the more popular prompts-- They will be tagged as being ‘inspired by’ this fic, but will be posted as their own fic. So check here if you’re interested in seeing those-- I should have updates for them in the next week. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Best Supporting Soulmate](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3447959) by [Valeris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valeris/pseuds/Valeris)
  * [Code Name Cassandra](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3451598) by [Valeris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valeris/pseuds/Valeris)
  * [The Apple](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3453593) by [Valeris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valeris/pseuds/Valeris)
  * [A Price Above Rubies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3459266) by [Valeris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valeris/pseuds/Valeris)
  * [Uptown Boys](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3459584) by [Valeris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valeris/pseuds/Valeris)




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